by Dr. Graham Standish
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.
An Oracle of Leadership
Connie Frierson
2 Samuel 23: 1 - 7
Today’s passage is styled the last words of David, the very last words of David. This started me thinking, “My, my what in the world would I say in my last hours, What advise, what reflections, what eulogy, what inanity might I utter? What understanding would I have reached about my life; about the world I was leaving, about God? Famous last words, those are the gist of today’s passage.
I thought I might need some help with this so I went to the Internet. There I found all sorts of famous and not so famous last words. What I found is that people have vastly different orientations to what they say at the end. Some look inward, some look outward, some look back, some look forward, some are flippant, some are unaware and caught off guard, some turn to their regrets, some to the hope of the future. For instance Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th president uttered, “I have tried so hard to do the right.” Grover took stock of where he had been. Oscar Wilde was flippant. He muttered, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.” And then he died. Edmund Gwenn, the actor who played Kris Kringle in the Miracle on 34th Street, was asked if dying was tough. His last words were, “Yes dying is tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.” Last words reflect our struggles and hope and even our foibles. Some last words are profound, as Jesus last words from Luke, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
But David’s last words were special. They were Psalm, a song like David wrote throughout his life, yet more. They were as special for what he didn’t say as for what he did. What did David say? The Psalm starts out with the titles of David. He was the son of Jesse, the one who God exalted and appointed. He was God’s favorite. This says who David was at his core. By the time you die you need to figure this out. In fact it would be best if you figured this out right now, this day and lived into it for the rest of your life. Notice what David didn’t say. He didn’t recount his victories, his trouncing of a giant and the Philistines the defeat to the Edomites, the expansion of Israel’s borders. Titles tell us what we think of ourselves. Queen Victoria was styled “By the grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and empress of India. But David’s titles are stripped of any boast, and every external, it starts with who he was in the humblest of terms, Jesse’s son, local livestock guy, small time farmer. The glory of David’s life was in his relationship with God. David was God exalted, not David pulling at his bootstraps, God appointed, God loved, God’s favorite.
This is the wisdom we need to get. You are God’s favorite. Now we live in a world of limits and hierarchy, with ladders and pecking orders. So we think there can only be one favorite. God is beyond these limits. How in the world do we think we can set our limits on the limitless God? You get to be God’s favorite. In the book The Shack, Wm Paul Young pictures Papa, the God the mother/father figure of saying again and again, ‘I am especially fond of Mac, of Missy, and that person and that person.’ This is God’s way of saying, “Oh my goodness you get to be God’s favorite, and you and you.” David got to the end of his life knowing who he was, not much in himself, everything in God. This is who David was, this is who I am and this is who you are, God’s favorite.
David’s last words were special. They were special because David’s last words weren’t even David’s own words. They were an oracle, a prophecy, a revelation and a vision. They were God’s own words placed in David’s mouth. “The spirit of the Lord speaks through me, his words are upon my tongue.” This is what God says though David’s last words, “One who rules over people justly rules in the fear of the Lord.” Read this in light of the love relationship of the favorite of God. This fear of the Lord is married with the love of God. This is a paradigm that is new to us and so often misunderstood. Love abides in us from God, yet we are not God. Fear of God faces the gulf between our puny selves and this spectacular God. God is always beyond us, fabulously, ridiculously beyond our limits and understanding. So when we act as leaders, in what ever capacity that is. We are or should be painfully aware of our limits. This is leadership from humility, leadership mindful of God’s highest standards, God’s love and justice for all God’s people of the earth.
You know what we can’t do this. This is impossible for us. We will mess this up. Positional power will go to our heads. Pride will motivate actions and blind our vision. We will dominate and abuse and alienate. The only way to do this ‘fear of the Lord’ leadership is spirit born, God leads and we place ourselves so much in his will that life giving actions result.
Leadership is so slippery because it is gift from God that comes in some surprising and seemingly accidental ways. God leadership comes not from technical manuals and motivational gimmicks, but from an anointing power that comes from the spirit. This is the power that comes from a barefoot lunatic like St. Francis, who led the church into a new understanding of humility and service. This is the power that comes from Mother Teresa, a tiny little nun from Romania in a foreign land with gigantic needs like India. This is God using a stuttering murder, a drop out from the Egyptian court like Moses. And this is the leadership that comes from the littlest brother in the bunch, the shepherd David. Leadership that is anointed doesn’t come from position; it comes from someone doing what God calls, listening and taking up the job at hand, big or little. The right relationship with God, this psalmist calls it ‘fear of the Lord.’ is humility and love. There isn’t a person here that is not called to something. We don’t even need to call this leadership, with all its oppressive baggage. We can call it listening for God and doing. We can call it building God’s world, answering the spirit call to our souls.
What does this oracle of leadership, God’s world building look like? Verse 4 has to resort to poetry because normal language won’t touch what being this kind of Friend of God looks like. Verse 4 says, “It is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain the grassy land.” Put your self in that place, the freshness of a new morning, the fragrance that comes only at that time of day, the light that is golden. This is like the in breaking of that first day of creation. There is a newness, a crispness that comes from joining in with God’s world building, no tired old been there, tried that gee it didn’t work mentality. This is gleaming, creative, new. I think the word that encapsulates this kind of being and working in God is Joy. Periodically we need to do a ‘Joy Check.’ Is what we are doing giving us joy? Now joy can coexist with frustration and tiredness and even suffering. But in a Joy check we ask, am I following God? I can only speak from my own experience here. School and work and family have frustrated me, they make me tired and sometime even cranky. But if I quiet myself and ask, “is this what God wants me to do?” I sense God’s joy. It bubbles through the surface weariness and the routine. This is more than satisfaction. It is a wellness in the soul. This is the light of the morning.
Being in God’s will, Kingdom Building, servant leadership has a special character. It creates a climate for health. I have been turning this idea of climate over and over in my mind. It has popped up several times this week. As I read a commentary on 2nd Samuel, the commentator wrote of the climate that come when people lead from God’s spirit, He wrote that the images of verse 4 create a climate of light and warmth and moisture enabling people to grow. A God lead leader enables individuals to develop, to grow to into the God vision of who they are to be. In the introduction to Agnes Sanford’s book, The Healing Light, the writer describes a climate of healing that occur when people pray and be with each other in a God led way. Actually the description is of a negative example, a terrible climate. The writer uses an example of a port in Siberia. The port has all the requirements, equipment, docks, and water depth to be a good port. But it’s frozen. The climate is wrong. We need this light, this warmth that will help us use all the hard wired talents, and functionality and equipment of our lives.
Last week as I came into the church before worship there was a climate of joy. The children’s choir was practicing in fellowship hall. I set up my power point and all the technical expertise of Dwayne and Graham all worked. The kitchen was full of Marsha’s and the Women’s Association soups ready to go out and feed families a quick nourishing hot meal on a busy night. The sanctuary was full of the set for Joseph, the Saturday performance was fantastic. Graham’s sermon and film clip were wonderful. This is a climate that nourishes God appointed leadership. All of these people, hundreds really, were each leading from some call of God to their heart. This is a little slice of the Kingdom of heaven. This was “like the light of the morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.”
The last words of David look ultimately look forward. David looks forward to hope of an everlasting covenant with God. This is the end of David’s life but not the end of life, not the end of hope. “All things will be ordered and secure and prosper.” It is from that hope that David looks forward. In our final hymn I have chosen “Be Ye Glad” by Michael Kelly Blanchard. It is an insert in your bulletin to take home to read and ponder. Verse 3 reads, “So be like lights on the rim of the water.” That is our job description; each of us leads in hope. We are to be the light, pointing out, “Look. God is here. Christ has come. Light has infused this life.” God’s spirit has provided this oracle of leadership, not for the end of life, but to all of life, your transformed life.
Amen.
Are You a Scribe or a Widow?
by Dr. Graham Standish
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
by Dr. Graham Standish
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.
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