John 9:1-23
February 20, 2011
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
I want to tell you about one of our members who died about seven years ago. He was a man whose life, and especially whose death, reflected much that is in our passage. You may remember Bob Burek. Bob was the husband of one our elders, Kathy Burek, who has since moved to Milwaukee. Bob wasn’t a member for most of the time Kathy was a member, mainly because Bob was a self-confessed agnostic flirting with atheism. Even so, I still considered Bob to be a friend. We used to talk a lot about some of our favorite topics, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Lord of the Rings. Sometime around 2001 he was diagnosed with colon cancer. When he was first diagnosed, we talked about faith and healing, but Bob pretty much believed that “these things happen,” and that he would get better. And he was right,… for a while. He did get better, and after a round of chemotherapy, his cancer seemed to go away. For another year he did well, but then another tumor was detected in his colon. His cancer came back with a vengeance, and the prognosis wasn’t good. The doctor said that basically he had only 2-3 months to live.
Bob and I spoke again about faith and healing. I told him that I would be willing to pray with him, even if he didn’t believe. Bob had a curious response. He told me a story. At the time, Bob was driving tour buses for Anderson Coach Company. He loved to take people to places like Toronto, Atlantic City, and New York. He said that on one of those trips he thought he got a message from God. He was driving from Pittsburgh to Ohio, or vice versa, and he started to run out of gas. He did the calculation in his head: he could stop at an exit coming up and just get gas, or he could keep going for another 25 miles and stop at a station that also had restaurants for people to get lunch. He figured he could make it. He was wrong. He ran out of gas, and was incredibly embarrassed. This was soon after he had been diagnosed again with cancer. He said that he thought God had been telling him something, which was that he was always determined to do things his own way, but that he needed to do things the right way. He saw the gas a metaphor for his cancer. God had been trying to tell him something the first time he got it, but he was determined that he could heal on his own. He recognized now that God was tapping him on the shoulder, and he needed to pay attention. Quite a change for an atheist.
Bob wanted me to pray with him for healing, and for our prayer ministers to do the same. We prayed for him and taught him to pray for himself. For a while Bob seemed to get better, and in fact in the midst of it all he had a spiritual awakening. He began to experience God in his life through his relationship with Kathy, through his friendships in the church, through his daily prayers, through the prayers of the healing ministers, and through worship. Bob decided to join the church, and for a while we were hopeful that he would get better. Then he took a turn for the worse.
The cancer was just too strong. His life was ebbing away. It took several more months for Bob to die. About a month before he died, I asked Bob if he was disappointed that the prayers for healing didn’t seem to be working. Bob paused, and then told me that he wasn’t disappointed at all. He said that before he got cancer he believed that God was just an idea, a crutch, that weak people used to prop themselves up in bad times. But that had all changed because ever since he had gotten cancer he was now experiencing God every single day of his life. And he wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. He said that he hadn’t had a physical healing, but he had had spiritual healing. He then told me that he was completely ready to die and come face-to-face with God. Bob had been transformed.
To me, Bob’s experience with healing exemplifies both the way God’s healing works, and how easy it is for us to misunderstand it. Bob was healed, but his healing was primarily spiritual, and only temporarily physical. You see, the problem among many of us is that when we think about the connection between healing and prayer, we only think of it in physical terms, not spiritual. When we pray to God to heal us, if we do pray, we want God to heal our bodies, but leave our minds and spirits alone. But what if God is saying to us, “Okay, I’ll heal you, but we’re going to start with your spirit and work outwards”?
We have a hard time bringing the idea of healing into Christian faith. The reason is medicine and charlatans. What do I mean by that? Most people don’t know the history of healing in Christianity, but up until Medieval times, praying for healing was part of the responsibility of the church. Christian faith was seen as part of healing. But then as the science of medicine grew, Christianity emphasized less and less our role in healing through prayer. Today we see healing as the territory of the medical field. We don’t really see Christianity or the church as playing much of a role in healing. What has really helped solidify the divide between prayer and healing has been the second problem, which is the proliferation of charlatans who prey on people who are sick, injured, or disabled. There is a long history of false faith healers who have set up shop to pray for healing, manufactured fake healings, all with the intent of bilking people out of their money.
What also keeps us from bringing healing back into Christianity is either/or thinking, rather than both/and thinking. In other words, we tend to think of healing as the territory of either medicine or religion, but not both medicine and religion. So you get medical people who dismiss the role of prayer in healing, but you also get religious sects, such as Seventh Day Adventists or Christian Scientists who say that we should only use prayer for healing, never medicine. They see the use of medical procedures for healing as a sign of lacking faith.
What either/or thinkers fail to see is how both medicine and religion can and do work together. For instance, in the past twenty years there has been an explosion of research on the impact of prayer on healing when it comes to people who have had medical procedures. They have found that heart patients who are prayed for after surgery heal faster and better than those who aren’t prayed for. They have found that people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, gout, chronic heart or lung problems, all do better when they are prayed for, in comparison to those who aren’t prayed for. They still have the problems, but they do better.
What I think that most people, including Christians, don’t realize is how central the idea of healing is to Christianity. Go through the gospels and see how often Jesus heals and teaches others to heal. It’s constant. He’s always healing, even more than he forgives sin. In fact, often the two go together. He forgives and heals.
It’s the connection between healing and forgiving sin that causes me to emphasize so much the idea of salvation as healing, rather than rescue from sin. Jesus speaks to this in Mark 2, where he responds to criticism that he eats with sinners by saying, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." He sees himself as a healer, as did the original church. There’s a reason why they talk so much about salvation in connection to healing. As I’ve said many times, the word “salvation” comes from the Latin word, salvus, which means not only to rescue but “to heal.” It’s also the root for the word “salve,” which is ointment we put on our wounds to help them heal. The Greek word, which is the language of the original New Testament, for salvation is sozo, which means to both save and heal. The original Christians understood that when we are saved, it is a process of healing, not just of getting rid of sin. Today we tend to only think of it as a rescue from sin, not a deep healing.
Unfortunately, the church of the Dark Ages disconnected salvation from healing. The church was living in dark times when people died young because of malnutrition and plagues. The church changed its sacrament from unction, which was a sacrament of healing through prayer and anointing with oil, to extreme unction, or “last rites,” which was said over a person right before death in order to get the person into heaven.
The church of the Dark Ages changed Christianity, and that change has persisted by eking healing out of our understanding of faith. Despite this, Christian faith, at its core, is a faith of healing, wholeness, and holiness (and those words also have the same root, hal). Because we tear apart the physical from the spiritual, we have a hard time being whole, holy, and healed. But what I’ve noticed is that the people who manage to hold the spirit, mind, and body in balance seem to also be more whole and healthy in their lives.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing so many members of this church who lived this way, holding the spirit, mind, and body together in wholeness and holiness. The person who always comes to my mind when I think of this is Jo Jones. Jo Jones, and she was a woman of deep, deep faith. When I first came to Calvin Church in 1996, everyone kept telling me about Jo. She was spending the winter in Florida with her husband, Chuck, another wonderful person. Before she came back from Florida, Jo sent me a letter telling me how excited she was that I was the new pastor at Calvin Church, and that she couldn’t wait to meet me.
When Jo returned from Florida, we quickly became friends. She was a deep, deep woman of prayer and love. Unfortunately, very soon after she returned she was diagnosed with cancer. In typical Jo fashion, she remained upbeat and decided to treat her cancer with a combination of prayer, alternative medicine, and radiation. She was a both/and woman. Whenever you saw her, she had a little bottle by her side, filled with some sort of fruit juice concocted to treat her cancer. She had a deep belief in healing prayer, and had anyone willing to pray to come and pray with and over her. She also believed in traditional medicine. When she started radiation treatments on the tumors on her neck, the doctors told her that she could expect the tumors to begin shrinking within ten weeks after her six-week treatments. She astounded her doctors when her tumors disappeared three weeks into her treatments. She was cancer-free.
A year or two later, her doctors discovered tumors in her brain. Again, she treated her cancer with prayer, alternative treatments, and radiation, and again the cancer tumors were killed. One more time she got cancer, and one more time the tumors were killed. Then she developed complications from the dead tumors. The dead tissue in her brain put pressure on her brain that caused memory and thinking problems. Jo’s health declined. I visited Jo many times, yet I never heard her complain. Instead she simply reiterated that God was with her and that she could sense God everywhere.
As her memory faded, she never lost her sense of love. I remember one time visiting her, and I was bothered because she really didn’t know who I was. She couldn’t talk much or process much. She was putting some hand lotion on her hand, and I mentioned that the lotion must feel good. She couldn’t put words together, but she held out her two hands for mine. I placed my one hand in hers. She took the lotion and squirted a huge amount into my palm, and proceeded to rub lotion into my hands for the next fifteen minutes. She couldn’t speak, and her mind was going, but not her heart. In her heart she needed to love and serve God, and if the only way she could do that was to cover my hands with lotion, then that was what she would do. She was a woman of holiness and wholeness in body, mind, and spirit.
Remember that we were not created to live forever, but I know that Jo’s life was extended because she managed to not only balance spirit, mind, and body, but she also balanced holiness, health, and wholeness. And Jo is not the only one in this congregation to do so. We’ve had many people who’ve lived like Jo, such as Betty Alexander. Like Jo, Betty struggled with cancer for much of her last twenty years, but combining prayer and medicine, she seemed to over come it. Eventually, she also died, but that’s because death is a part of life, and it is a final healing.
I believe that healing is meant to be at core of the Christian life, but to experience the kind of healing we’re called to, it requires not just praying when we get sick, hurt, or in trouble. It requires actually living a constant prayerful life in which God’s Spirit becomes so much a part of our spirit that we radiate wholeness, holiness, and health
Amen.
Understanding Spiritual Experiences: Calling
Acts 6:5-16
February 6, 2011
They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
Do you recognize the name Kaile Warren? You may have seen him if, over the years, you’ve watch the CBS early show on Saturday mornings. Warren used to do features on things such as how to winterize your house and how to make basic repairs. He is the founder and owner of a franchised company, Rent-a-Husband, and he is known nationally. He is a successful man, but he wasn’t always like this. There was a point in his life when he was as low as anyone could imagine. He was homeless and hopeless, living in a warehouse and sleeping with rats.
At one point, in the early 1990s, Warren had his own construction business, a nice house, a wife, and an enviable life. Then tragedy struck. He had an accident that left him injured, and the results were that he slowly began to lose his business. Eventually he had to declare bankruptcy. He lost his house. Then his wife left him. He was penniless, alone, and directionless. He drifted onto the streets. He became a homeless man living on a wharf in Portland, Maine. His life was in shambles. No matter how hard he tried to resurrect his life, some sort of self-destructiveness kept pulling him down. He was in despair and ready to die.
He hit the lowest point of his life in 1996. He was working in a warehouse during the day, getting paid peanuts, and then sneaking back into it at night to sleep. He couldn’t afford an apartment. He was sleeping on boxes and washing up in a bathroom. It was 3 a.m., and he woke up as a rat scurried across his foot. It brought his descent into his own personal Hell into clear focus. After getting rid of the rat, he began to cry. For the first time in his life he prayed. He wasn’t sure that he believed in God, but he didn’t know who or what else to turn to. In his desperate prayer, he asked God to help him somehow, anyhow. As he prayed, ten words popped up in his mind: Rent-a-Husband. For Those Jobs That Never Get Done. In that instant he knew his future. He would develop a handyman business based on integrity. He knew that many divorced and widowed women felt helpless to do the home repairs that their husbands used to do. He also knew that they were often targets of con-men and scam artists. So he would become a source of integrity for divorced or widowed women who didn’t know how to fix things for themselves.
Still homeless, he managed to rent a beat-up van for $50 a week. He put the name Rent-a-Husband on the side of the van with electrical tape. He printed up fliers for his business and put them on the car windows of women attending a divorced womens’ group. Soon he received requests for his services. Slowly he built up his business. His operation was such a shoestring operation that he often had to borrow tools and ladders from the women he worked for. Still, he was determined that his reputation for politeness, responsibility, and reliability would win them over.
Today, Warren is the president of a business that has eight franchises and continues to grow. The business has gone up and down with the economy, and he has made some bad business decisions along the way, but that has not detracted from his calling. His business is built on his own faith in God, whom he experienced on that wharf years before, and on a pledge to offer the best service possible—to be a business that cares about people. All the men who work for him have to undergo a thorough background check, take classes on dealing politely and responsibly with others, and have their work continually monitored for quality. His is a story of following God’s calling to live a life of serving.
I love Kaile Warren’s story because it teaches so much about what it takes to hear God’s calling in our lives. The truth is that many of us struggle with hearing and understanding God’s call in our lives. All of us wish we were like Paul in our passage for this morning—able to hear God’s voice telling us what to do. But most of us don’t really feel as though we ever hear God’s voice, let alone hearing it constantly like Paul seemed to do. The downside of reading Paul’s story is that when we don’t have the kinds of experiences that people in the Bible, like Paul, have, then we tend to think of the Bible as being unrealistic.
I want to challenge that idea, though, because I think most of us do hear God’s voice constantly, and even somewhat clearly. The problem is that we just don’t recognize it as God’s voice. We’re too busy in our lives, too focused on the demands of our lives, too sure we know the way the world works to really hear God.
If you want to understand how God’s calling works, it’s helpful to look at Paul’s and Kaile’s experiences for guidance. How was it that Paul was able to hear God’s voice in a dream? The thing we forget when we listen to the story is that Paul was able to hear God’s voice because he was totally committed to hearing God’s voice. Paul lived a life of dedication to serving God, and that dedication became the ground for hearing God. You see, many of us want to hear God’s voice, but we want God to speak to us about things that matter to us, and not necessarily to God. We want God to call us to what we already want, not to what God wants. Paul was living a life focused on serving God, and God’s calling to him was serving focused.
Now before you get too tempted to say that Paul didn’t live a realistic life because he was serving as a missionary, unlike us, I’m going to challenge that notion. Did you know that Paul actually was a businessman? Did you know that he was an entrepreneur? For fourteen years before he became a missionary, he was a tentmaker, making tents that were essential to commerce in those days. There were few inns or hotels at that time, so when business people, or the army, travelled, they would use elaborate tents. Whenever Paul went to a different place to spread the gospel, he also set up his tentmaking business. He was living in the working world, but at the same time was dedicated to serving God in all of his life. That’s important to understanding God’s call.
Also, Paul didn’t hear God’s voice constantly. Only at crucial times. Often God’s doesn’t need to speak to us when we are already doing what God wants. Then God’s calling is a whisper, telling us to keep doing what we are doing.
Kaile Warren was able to hear God’s calling because, even though his life wasn’t dedicated to serving God, he was desperate in his life for something different, for something more. He was praying for help, for an intervention, and he was doing so with as much honesty and openness as possible. His desperation opened him to God, but he also wasn’t just self-focused. He wanted to serve others. What he heard from God was a confirmation of that service-focus. Rent-A-Husband wasn’t just a business. It was compassionate service to those who are often preyed upon.
Here’s what we learn from Paul and Kaile. First, God often speaks to us in the most simple terms, saying stuff like, “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” or “Rent-A-Husband. For Those Jobs That Never Get Done.” But in that simplicity is a world of understanding. When God speaks in simple words, we often intuitively understand all that it means. Also, when God speaks, it is always giving and service focused. God doesn’t speak to us about how we can get a better job, better house, better situation. God speaks to us about how we can care more about other people, make life better for others, and serve God in all of life.
God is ready to speak to each and every one of us, but the question is whether we are ready to hear what God has to say. If you don’t think you’re hearing God’s call, here are several things to think about.
First, what’s the focus of your listening? God’s calling is always giving and other oriented. If you’re not hearing God’s voice, it may be that you are focusing too much on God serving you, not on you serving God.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. A few months ago I had a conversation with a member of our church about his business. He works in an engineering firm. He told me that back when he started working there, the place seemed to effortlessly make money. The reason, he said, was that the founders were men of faith. Their focus was on serving others. They believed that engineers should be servants, making life better for others, and that if they did this the money would take care of itself. And it did. The firm grew and grew. But in recent years other members of the firm have been made partners, and these men care mostly about the bottom line, profits, and making money. They are always talking about how to get more business, and the result has been that the company has been struggling. They’ve had to cut staff. What’s the difference? As long as the company was service focused, they made profits, but once they became more profit focused they lost business because of their lack of service. Often the staff they cut are those who provide customer service. Whether they knew it or not, the original owners were able to hear God’s calling to serve. But now the company struggles because they aren’t open to it anymore. If we can’t hear God, we need to ask what the focus of our listening is.
Second, if we can’t hear God’s calling, we need to ask what the state of our life is? The more our lives are lived away from God, the harder it is to hear God and to receive a calling that leads to God’s blessings. How we live has a lot to do with what we hear. Remember, Paul was immersed in serving God. The way he lived his life had a lot to do with how well he heard God.
Finally, we need to ask, what are we doing to pay attention to God? Are we engaging in practices and ways of praying that open us to God’s calling? I’m not going to go into detail on this because this is going to be the point of Connie Frierson’s sermon next week.
The point of all this is that God does speak, and God speaks to us constantly, but to hear we have to live a life that’s open to it. Is our focus on serving God or ourselves? Does our life open us to God’s call or close us? Are we praying and seeking God’s calling in a way that helps us hear?
Amen.
February 6, 2011
They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
Do you recognize the name Kaile Warren? You may have seen him if, over the years, you’ve watch the CBS early show on Saturday mornings. Warren used to do features on things such as how to winterize your house and how to make basic repairs. He is the founder and owner of a franchised company, Rent-a-Husband, and he is known nationally. He is a successful man, but he wasn’t always like this. There was a point in his life when he was as low as anyone could imagine. He was homeless and hopeless, living in a warehouse and sleeping with rats.
At one point, in the early 1990s, Warren had his own construction business, a nice house, a wife, and an enviable life. Then tragedy struck. He had an accident that left him injured, and the results were that he slowly began to lose his business. Eventually he had to declare bankruptcy. He lost his house. Then his wife left him. He was penniless, alone, and directionless. He drifted onto the streets. He became a homeless man living on a wharf in Portland, Maine. His life was in shambles. No matter how hard he tried to resurrect his life, some sort of self-destructiveness kept pulling him down. He was in despair and ready to die.
He hit the lowest point of his life in 1996. He was working in a warehouse during the day, getting paid peanuts, and then sneaking back into it at night to sleep. He couldn’t afford an apartment. He was sleeping on boxes and washing up in a bathroom. It was 3 a.m., and he woke up as a rat scurried across his foot. It brought his descent into his own personal Hell into clear focus. After getting rid of the rat, he began to cry. For the first time in his life he prayed. He wasn’t sure that he believed in God, but he didn’t know who or what else to turn to. In his desperate prayer, he asked God to help him somehow, anyhow. As he prayed, ten words popped up in his mind: Rent-a-Husband. For Those Jobs That Never Get Done. In that instant he knew his future. He would develop a handyman business based on integrity. He knew that many divorced and widowed women felt helpless to do the home repairs that their husbands used to do. He also knew that they were often targets of con-men and scam artists. So he would become a source of integrity for divorced or widowed women who didn’t know how to fix things for themselves.
Still homeless, he managed to rent a beat-up van for $50 a week. He put the name Rent-a-Husband on the side of the van with electrical tape. He printed up fliers for his business and put them on the car windows of women attending a divorced womens’ group. Soon he received requests for his services. Slowly he built up his business. His operation was such a shoestring operation that he often had to borrow tools and ladders from the women he worked for. Still, he was determined that his reputation for politeness, responsibility, and reliability would win them over.
Today, Warren is the president of a business that has eight franchises and continues to grow. The business has gone up and down with the economy, and he has made some bad business decisions along the way, but that has not detracted from his calling. His business is built on his own faith in God, whom he experienced on that wharf years before, and on a pledge to offer the best service possible—to be a business that cares about people. All the men who work for him have to undergo a thorough background check, take classes on dealing politely and responsibly with others, and have their work continually monitored for quality. His is a story of following God’s calling to live a life of serving.
I love Kaile Warren’s story because it teaches so much about what it takes to hear God’s calling in our lives. The truth is that many of us struggle with hearing and understanding God’s call in our lives. All of us wish we were like Paul in our passage for this morning—able to hear God’s voice telling us what to do. But most of us don’t really feel as though we ever hear God’s voice, let alone hearing it constantly like Paul seemed to do. The downside of reading Paul’s story is that when we don’t have the kinds of experiences that people in the Bible, like Paul, have, then we tend to think of the Bible as being unrealistic.
I want to challenge that idea, though, because I think most of us do hear God’s voice constantly, and even somewhat clearly. The problem is that we just don’t recognize it as God’s voice. We’re too busy in our lives, too focused on the demands of our lives, too sure we know the way the world works to really hear God.
If you want to understand how God’s calling works, it’s helpful to look at Paul’s and Kaile’s experiences for guidance. How was it that Paul was able to hear God’s voice in a dream? The thing we forget when we listen to the story is that Paul was able to hear God’s voice because he was totally committed to hearing God’s voice. Paul lived a life of dedication to serving God, and that dedication became the ground for hearing God. You see, many of us want to hear God’s voice, but we want God to speak to us about things that matter to us, and not necessarily to God. We want God to call us to what we already want, not to what God wants. Paul was living a life focused on serving God, and God’s calling to him was serving focused.
Now before you get too tempted to say that Paul didn’t live a realistic life because he was serving as a missionary, unlike us, I’m going to challenge that notion. Did you know that Paul actually was a businessman? Did you know that he was an entrepreneur? For fourteen years before he became a missionary, he was a tentmaker, making tents that were essential to commerce in those days. There were few inns or hotels at that time, so when business people, or the army, travelled, they would use elaborate tents. Whenever Paul went to a different place to spread the gospel, he also set up his tentmaking business. He was living in the working world, but at the same time was dedicated to serving God in all of his life. That’s important to understanding God’s call.
Also, Paul didn’t hear God’s voice constantly. Only at crucial times. Often God’s doesn’t need to speak to us when we are already doing what God wants. Then God’s calling is a whisper, telling us to keep doing what we are doing.
Kaile Warren was able to hear God’s calling because, even though his life wasn’t dedicated to serving God, he was desperate in his life for something different, for something more. He was praying for help, for an intervention, and he was doing so with as much honesty and openness as possible. His desperation opened him to God, but he also wasn’t just self-focused. He wanted to serve others. What he heard from God was a confirmation of that service-focus. Rent-A-Husband wasn’t just a business. It was compassionate service to those who are often preyed upon.
Here’s what we learn from Paul and Kaile. First, God often speaks to us in the most simple terms, saying stuff like, “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” or “Rent-A-Husband. For Those Jobs That Never Get Done.” But in that simplicity is a world of understanding. When God speaks in simple words, we often intuitively understand all that it means. Also, when God speaks, it is always giving and service focused. God doesn’t speak to us about how we can get a better job, better house, better situation. God speaks to us about how we can care more about other people, make life better for others, and serve God in all of life.
God is ready to speak to each and every one of us, but the question is whether we are ready to hear what God has to say. If you don’t think you’re hearing God’s call, here are several things to think about.
First, what’s the focus of your listening? God’s calling is always giving and other oriented. If you’re not hearing God’s voice, it may be that you are focusing too much on God serving you, not on you serving God.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. A few months ago I had a conversation with a member of our church about his business. He works in an engineering firm. He told me that back when he started working there, the place seemed to effortlessly make money. The reason, he said, was that the founders were men of faith. Their focus was on serving others. They believed that engineers should be servants, making life better for others, and that if they did this the money would take care of itself. And it did. The firm grew and grew. But in recent years other members of the firm have been made partners, and these men care mostly about the bottom line, profits, and making money. They are always talking about how to get more business, and the result has been that the company has been struggling. They’ve had to cut staff. What’s the difference? As long as the company was service focused, they made profits, but once they became more profit focused they lost business because of their lack of service. Often the staff they cut are those who provide customer service. Whether they knew it or not, the original owners were able to hear God’s calling to serve. But now the company struggles because they aren’t open to it anymore. If we can’t hear God, we need to ask what the focus of our listening is.
Second, if we can’t hear God’s calling, we need to ask what the state of our life is? The more our lives are lived away from God, the harder it is to hear God and to receive a calling that leads to God’s blessings. How we live has a lot to do with what we hear. Remember, Paul was immersed in serving God. The way he lived his life had a lot to do with how well he heard God.
Finally, we need to ask, what are we doing to pay attention to God? Are we engaging in practices and ways of praying that open us to God’s calling? I’m not going to go into detail on this because this is going to be the point of Connie Frierson’s sermon next week.
The point of all this is that God does speak, and God speaks to us constantly, but to hear we have to live a life that’s open to it. Is our focus on serving God or ourselves? Does our life open us to God’s call or close us? Are we praying and seeking God’s calling in a way that helps us hear?
Amen.
Understanding Spiritual Experiences: Conversion
Acts 9:1-19
January 30, 2011
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus,…
What do you make of the story of Paul’s conversion? Do you think it was a one-time conversion just for Paul, or do you think that all Christians need to have a somewhat similar conversion experience? These are hard questions to answer, and how you answer it may depend on what your experiences have been.
I’ve been around a lot of Christians who have had conversion experiences, and a lot of them say that to really be a Christian we have to have one of these big experiences. They base their beliefs on John 3:3, which says, ”Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from again.” There’s a problem when it comes to using this passage, though. The problem is that the passage doesn’t actually describe what a “born-again” experience should be like, nor does it say that it should be like Paul’s. Despite the fact that many people have had certain experiences that they describe as “born-again,” other than Paul’s conversion, there are few other examples in the Bible of what a born-again experience might be like. Also, even the term “born-again” is a bit questionable since the Greek word for “again,” ανοθεν, also means “from above.” Thus, Jesus is telling us that we either need to be born again from above, or born from above again. Both terms are a bit nebulous, despite many people’s insistence that it means that we must have an experience like Paul,… or like them.
Still, I’ve met many people over the years who have had Paul-like experiences, and many of these experiences are quite inspiring. For example, I remember having done a wedding for a couple in which the groom came from a Pentecostal family. Pentecostals believe that to be saved we must be “born-again” (despite the fact that in the passage cited before, it doesn’t say we have to be born again to be saved, only born again/from above to see the kingdom of God). I was co-officiating with a Pentecostal pastor. At the reception, I was put at the table with that pastor, his wife, and several other people, all of whom were Pentecostals.
During dinner, the conversation turned to when each of us was “saved.” Everyone started sharing stories of when they had their born-again experiences. One-by-one each person told her or his story. The whole time I kept wondering what I would say when it was my turn. You see, I haven’t had a born-again experience like all of them. I’ve had many small experiences, but no one, big, life-changing experience. There’s a reason. Even though I walked away from the church at 15 and returned when I was in my early twenties, I never strayed that far. I always cared about my relationship with God, and I was always trying to live a life of service. I never had that experience of living a terrible life and then returning to Christ. So I didn’t have that kind of story.
It got to the point at which I was supposed to share my story, and fortunately just as everyone looked at me the best man stood up to give his toast. By the time all the toasts were given, everyone had forgotten about me telling my story. God is good
Still, I remember almost all of the stories from that dinner. I especially remember one story from a man named Sal. Sal talked about how he was surprised by God in a very unlikely place. Years ago, he had had dreams of becoming a successful musician, but over time it became apparent that he just didn’t have the talent or the skill. He went from band to band, hoping to make it big, but instead the bands just got worse and worse.
He was working during the day selling computers, or something like that, while playing guitar at night in a cheesy, bad top-40s band. It was New Year’s Eve at the old Holiday House in Monroeville and midnight struck while he was playing in the band. Streamers flew, champaign corks popped, men and women kissed, and Sal stood with the band, playing Auld Lang Syne. He felt cynical, bitter, and angry. He looked at these people, drunk and acting like fools, and he thought to himself, “These idiots! They are going through the paces of life. They are nothing but sad, lonely people with nothing going for them but getting drunk on New Year’s Eve and kissing everyone in sight.” As he thought these bitter thoughts, God broke through. He suddenly realized he was describing himself, and that there was a better way with God. In that moment he felt God’s love, and it led him to love the people he was looking at. He changed in that moment and said a prayer to God, promising to follow God wherever God led. It led him to join a church, and to eventually play in a church worship and praise band.
Sal was converted on the spot. It wasn’t quite Paul’s experience, but it was powerful. It’s not only Pentecostals who have these kinds of experiences. Sometimes even Presbyterians have them. Another woman I know, Lori, a Presbyterian pastor I met while in graduate school, had an experience of God that led to her conversion and changed her life. She had grown up without religion in Utah. One day, when she was in her mid-20s, she was walking by a golf course. She heard the thwack of ball being hit off the tee, and before she could react the golf ball smacked her in the back of the head, knocking her unconscious. As she lied on the ground, she felt God’s presence, and it was the most loving presence she had ever felt. She knew that God loved her beyond any love a human person could give. She was loved completely without condition. Afterwards, she became so thoroughly consumed with this experience that she decided to go to seminary and become a pastor so that she could live her life in the service of that one who loved her so deeply.
It’s not only Pentecostals and Presbyterian pastors who have these kinds of experiences. We have a number of members here who have had experiences. I’ve been privileged to hear about these experiences, and many of them are profound. But to me, there’s still an essential question: do we have to have some sort of conversion experience to truly become a Christian? The answer is yes,… and no. It all depends on what you mean?
I don’t think you have to have a radical experience like Paul’s, Sal’s, or Lori’s in order to become a Christian, but to be a Christian means to undergo conversion. Actually, what most people don’t realize is that the kinds of experiences Paul, Sal, and Lori had are both gifts and indications. They are gifts that give people certainty about God’s love and presence, but also indications that they had been particularly closed off to God. You’ll notice a trend in most people who have had dramatic conversion experiences. Most had been living lives that were either God-absent. What I mean is that they were ignoring God, they were often focusing only on themselves and their own concerns, or they were actively trying to hurt people who do have faith. Their conversion comes because they are so far away from God that the movement back to God is sudden and traumatic, much like a rubber band snapping back hard from too much tension.
The fact is that many Christians never have that big a conversion experience because they never really stretched that far from God in the first place. I know that I’ve never had that big, one-time conversion experience. And I doubt I ever will. The reason is that even though I walked away from the church for a time, I never walked away from God. And even while I was away from the church, I was still trying to live a life of serving God. That’s how I became a counselor in the first place. I was trying to serve God. So my conversions have all been relatively small but powerfu. And they have been constant throughout the years.
I think that the emphasis by some Christians on the need for that big, one-time conversion actually hides a feature of the Christian life that Paul’s life reveals. Paul’s conversion may have been dramatic, but it was only the first conversion of many. Paul didn’t have his one conversion and then suddenly become an apostle. His conversion was followed by time spent in the Arabian desert, three years of training in Damascus to learn the Christian life, and then fourteen years living in the city of Tarsus, working as a tent maker. His sudden conversion was followed by seventeen years of ongoing small conversions as he moved deeper and deeper into the Christian life. What Paul’s life reveals is that we aren’t just called to a one-time conversion. We are called to live lives that are constantly being converted.
The fact is that all of us are called to ongoing conversion. One of the hallmark sayings of the Reformed tradition, of which the Presbyterian Church is a part, is “reformed, always being reformed.” This means that we are transformed, and always being transformed. To be a Christian means to live a life that never stays the same. We are called to constant conversion.
Adrian van Kaam said it another way. He said that we are called to continual JND experiences. Do you know what JND means? It means “just noticeable differences.” When we really open up to God, we become changed all the time, but in ways that are just noticeable. And over the years, as we look back, we can see how those changes accumulate, so that one, two, three,… forty years later we recognize that we are not the same as we were.
This kind of conversion also moves us out of our comfort zones and our boxes. For instance, what I’ve noticed among people who grow spiritually over time is that liberals become more conservative,… and conservatives become more liberal. The reason? God stretches us to grow where we are stunted, and to be a Christian means to grow beyond restrictive labels. The more we identify ourselves with particular movements, even Christian movements, the more we inhibit conversion and transformation—the more we inhibit God in our lives.
You may not know this, but Calvin Church is set up as a place of conversion. We aren’t like many of the evangelical and Pentecostal churches that are particularly good at sparking that big, one-time conversion. We aren’t particularly good at getting that non-Christian to experience God for the first time. But what we are good at is taking that already converted Christian and helping her or him to change everyday.
You can see this in the way I preach. In all honesty, the way I preach is not intended to inspire you. But it is meant to change you. When I preach each Sunday, what I’m hoping for is that you will walk away with the seeds for a JND experience during the week. My hope is that I’ve opened up a possibility with God that you are willing to explore, and because you are, you can be subtly changed by God. I’m not looking for that one-time conversion. I’m looking for that constant conversion.
The key to this ongoing conversion is whether you’re prepared for it. The more you think you know, the more closed off you are. In fact, the hardest people to reach are often those Christians who think they know enough, and therefore don’t allow themselves to be stretched daily. These are the ones you’ve experienced, who have all the answers and who have no problems judging the failings of others. They’ve had the one-time conversion, and they think it makes them an expert on who is or isn’t a Christian.
Do you want to know the real secret to living a life of ongoing conversion? It is a life lived with awe, reverence, and humility. The question is where you are in all of this, and what are you doing to allow yourself to be converted everyday.
Amen
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