The Wisdom of,... Knowing There Is a Season

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Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

February 24, 2013

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 


     a time to be born, and a time to die;


     a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;


     a time to kill, and a time to heal;


     a time to break down, and a time to build up; 


     a time to weep, and a time to laugh;


     a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 


     a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;


     a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 


     a time to seek, and a time to lose;


     a time to keep, and a time to throw away;


     a time to tear, and a time to sew;


     a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 


     a time to love, and a time to hate;


     a time for war, and a time for peace.

         What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

            Back in 1273, the great Thomas Aquinas, the theologian most responsible for wrestling Christianity out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance, had a vision. It changed everything for him.

            Aquinas had already written one of the greatest Christian books ever, his Summa Theologiae, and he was in the process of working on his opus, his greatest work. But then he got deathly ill. Something happened to him in that illness. He saw God, or heaven, or the future, or something. Whatever it was, it overwhelmed him. He said little to anyone about it, other than to comment that it was beautiful.

            As he got healthier, everyone expected him to continue his writings. They wanted to read what came next out of his great mind. But he wouldn’t write. People begged him, but he just never got back to work. His assistant, Reginald, kept bugging him about it. Finally, Aquinas said to him, “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me.” All that I have written seems like straw… Here’s perhaps the greatest Christian writer of all time, and his words seem like straw, like the stuff you place on the floor of a stall for cows and sheep to poop on.

            To understand how monumental this statement was, consider what Aquinas did. Prior to him, Christianity had been trapped in hundreds of years of stale, inward-looking, insular theology. It had ceased to speak to the realities of life, and instead had devolved into platitudes. Then Aquinas began reading Aristotle, whose works had come again to Christianity through the Muslims. Christians had ignored the writings of Aristotle for 700 years. When Aquinas read Aristotle, he realized that he was being given a whole new way of considering Christianity. So he wrote. His writings revitalized Christianity, and spun movements that would eventually become the Protestant Reformation and so much more.

            How could Aquinas consider his works to be like straw? All we know is that whatever Aquinas saw, it put everything into perspective for him, including the value of his own writings. In that moment Aquinas understood the deep messages of Ecclesiastes.

            Our associate pastor, Connie Frierson did a great introduction to Ecclesiastes last week, and this week we continue the journey into wisdom. As Connie mentioned, this book is wisdom from someone who has lived long and tried everything. In sports terms, he was a grizzled vet, the kind of person who deeply understood the game, even if he’d lost a step. He was like Gary Roberts or Bill Guerin for the Penguins, Jerome Bettis or Hines Ward for the Steelers. They taught wisdom to younger players, whether or not they listened.

            The writer of Ecclesiastes had lived so much of life thinking that this or that mattered. He had pursued the ways of wealth, promiscuity, self-indulgence, power, influence, and so much more, yet toward the end of life he realized that life wasn’t about the things he thought it was. This writer reminded me of an old pastor I had lunch with six or seven years ago. I had asked him, looking back, if there was anything he regretted in his ministry. Without hesitation he said, “I wish I had spent more time with my family. My wife made it so easy for me to focus on the church and spend all of my time there that I just wasn’t at home much. I look at my kids now, who are adults, and I realize that they needed me more than the church did. I wish I had spent more time them.” This is an Ecclesiastes wisdom statement.

            The grizzled vet who wrote Ecclesiastes understood, late in life, what really mattered.

            There are two really great insights Ecclesiastes has, one of which Connie talked about last week. She talked about the idea of hebed, which is the Hebrew word translated as “vanity.” Vanity is not a good translation. The best word is something like “vapor.” Personally, I like the term “mist,” which is similar. It basically means that life is like a mist that cannot be clearly understood or seen, and that is temporary like mist. It is sort of similar to the Buddhist idea that life is illusion, although it’s not quite the same. Basically the writer of Ecclesiastes is saying that you can never fully understand life, capture life, or live it perfectly. Whatever you think is the essence of life, or the meaning of life, is fleeting.

            This idea leads to the other great insight, which is from our passage: Life has a rhythm that we can either live into and find meaning in it, or struggle against and lose meaning

            There’s a reason our passage is read so much at funerals. Funerals are a time when people are confronted with the way life really is, and it can be a time when people are most open to the deep wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Of course, that’s sometimes, but not always. There are a lot of people who hate funerals and avoid them like the plague. And even among those who do go, often they tune out the service as they sit there, treating the service like it’s the equivalent of taking a spoonful of cod liver oil. That’s truer of those who are younger. As you age, you tend to gain a greater appreciation for the importance of funerals. They help us deal with life as it really is.

            We read Ecclesiastes at funerals because this passage has some really important messages to tell us about life,… and death. First, it reminds us that there is a Divine Purpose to everything. It’s just that God doesn’t really tell us what that purpose is. We are invited to live according to God’s purpose, and to find a way to fit into God’s purpose, but what that grand purpose is God keeps to God’s self. God doesn’t consult with us. I don’t think it’s because God doesn’t want to tell us. I suspect it’s that as hard as we might try, there’s no way we could begin to even partially understand it. It would be much like trying to explain to a fish how life is lived on land. The fish can’t conceive of things like cities, farms, roads, and factories, and the fish can’t even speak or think like we do. Maybe we could talk to a porpoise, which isn’t a fish, but we’d have to find a common language first.

            At times we all struggle against the way the world is—against God’s purpose—especially when people close to us die, or events happen that have no explanation: a child, a parent, a husband, a wife, a friend, a mentor dies unexpectedly, and we ask “why?” God doesn’t really answer why, even if we ask it a million times. Or at best God gives us glimpses of why. And what makes it even harder to ascertain why is that the times we are most likely to ask “why” are the times we are least able to hear God’s answer. We put constraints on the answers, demanding that God answer the way we want, that God fit the explanation into our view of life.

            Back in 1991, when I was an associate pastor, I received a visit one day from a troubled young man who wanted to know “why.” I had been working in my office, and the secretary stepped in and said, “There’s a young man here who wants to see you. He looks really troubled and upset.” I told her to send him in. Before I could even introduce myself he said, “Why does God let good people suffer and die?” That’s not an easy question to answer even with a lot of thought, but it’s especially difficult to answer right out of the blue. I took a step back with him, asked him his name, told him mine, and then I asked, “What’s happened to you that’s causing you to wonder?  It’s obvious that something bad has happened.” He said, “I don’t understand why Senator John Heinz died yesterday in a helicopter accident. He was a really good man. Why did he have to die?” 

            He told me that he had been a college intern in Heinz’s senate office, and that Heinz was one of his heroes. We talked for about an hour, and then he left. I don’t think that anything I said helped. I’m not sure that there was anything that I could have said that would have helped. The problem was that he really didn’t want “God” answers. He didn’t want to hear anything about the promise of Heaven, he didn’t want to hear anything about how God created the universe, and he didn’t want to hear about trusting in God.

            He didn’t want to hear the kind of answer that Ecclesiastes gives, the one that talks about how there is a time for everything under heaven. He didn’t want to hear that people die in helicopter accidents, just as people die of cancer, heart attacks, pneumonia, violence, and suicides. The fact is that people die, and that’s what Ecclesiastes reminds us of. In fact, that makes it harder for us in our age is that people tend to be really healthy and live long lives in comparison to people just 100 years ago.

            100 years ago people died from things that have been mostly wiped out, such as whooping cough, tuberculosis, polio, and yellow fever. People died from scratches and injuries that today are minor. In the days of Ecclesiastes, people were lucky if out of six children, two made it to adulthood, and one made it to the ripe old age of 50. People died from injuries from everyday tasks. For example, think about the process of stretching wool so that it can be spun into yarn. A woman would take a ball of sheep’s wool and pull it apart, while thrusting it up and down on a cluster of sharp nails gathered together on a block of wood and pointed upward. If a nail got rusty, and the woman punctured her finger on it, she could easily die of tetanus. No one would even know where the disease came from. Death is hard for us today, and we’re relatively well protected from early deaths. Ecclesiastes reminds us that death happens, as do wars, mourning, tearing, and weeping, as well as peace, laughing, dancing, harvest, and life.

            Going back to Heinz’s intern, I’m not sure what kind of answer he wanted, but it was clear that nothing I could say was going to make a difference. He had questions, but he also placed restrictions on the kinds of answers I could give. He wasn’t ready to delve into God’s purposes. He didn’t understand the wisdom of Ecclesiastes before Heinz died, so how could he understand it afterwards?

            The truth is that Ecclesiastes exposes us to a truth, which is that this is just the way life is, the way it’s been since the beginnig, and the way it will be for centuries. Still, the message of Ecclesiastes isn’t just about the hopelessness of the way life is—that life is nasty, brutish, and short (in the Enlightenment philosopher’s, Thomas Hobbes, words). The deeper message of Ecclesiastes is that if you find a way to live within the realities of life, it can be beautiful, pleasant, and long. But this requires finding a way to fit into how life is, rather than beating your head against life, wondering why it isn’t the way you want it to be.

            True wisdom means learning how to fit into life and all its wonders. This fitting in ultimately means finding balance in life, and that’s the great message of this passage: that life is a balance

            The human tendency is always to the extremes—“more is better,” “extreme is supreme.” The fact is that humans have always tended toward excess, and excess always leads away from wisdom. That’s the problem of addictions. They lead us away from wisdom by making us slaves to an ever-increasing need for more:  more booze, more drugs, more sex, more gambling, more work, more… whatever it is that we seek more of. There’s a reason, too, why Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. Wealth is more, and increased wealth is increased “more,” leading us to lose our sense of compassion for others as it propels us to seek more and more security. Ecclesiastes teaches us that the pursuit of more leads us away from the deep, rich life God wants for us, but keeping everything in balance leads to God’s joy.

            I love Ecclesiastes because it gets right to the heart of how to live a really good life, even if it doesn’t necessarily fit with the world’s wisdom. It recognizes that storms, winter, conflict, weeping, and even death are all part of life, but so are sunshine, summer, peace, laughing, and life. It recognizes that eating, drinking, and pleasure are gifts from God, as is our work. Finally, it recognizes that there is a purpose to everything, even if you can’t figure it out. Our task isn’t to figure it out,… it’s to just live it out.

            Amen.

The Wisdom of Seeing What IS, The Rev. Connie Frierson

Ecclesiastes 1:1-18
Reflections of a Royal Philosopher

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
   Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
   at which they toil under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
   but the earth remains for ever.
The sun rises and the sun goes down,
   and hurries to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south,
   and goes round to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
   and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
   but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
   there they continue to flow.
All things are wearisome;
   more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
   or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
   and what has been done is what will be done;
   there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
   ‘See, this is new’?
It has already been,
   in the ages before us.
The people of long ago are not remembered,
   nor will there be any remembrance
of people yet to come
   by those who come after them.

The Futility of Seeking Wisdom

 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
   and what is lacking cannot be counted.

 I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
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The Wisdom of Seeing What IS


Welcome to a new sermon series.  During Lent Graham and I will be working our way through the Wisdom of Ecclesiastes.  Lent is a time for taking on a discipline and stretching our spiritual muscles. Often people take up some special study or task or mission for Lent.  Or sometime people give up some item or activity as a discipline.  Lent is a time for growth and developing some spiritual muscle.  How appropriate for Lent that we are going into one of the most difficult books of the bible.  Ecclesiastes is not a book to be skipped thorough lightly. We don’t find Ecclesiastes in children’s story bibles. It doesn’t have a storyline to entertain us.  It doesn’t recount historic or cultural events. There are no religious ceremonies, no temple or worship information or examples. Ecclesiastes isn’t searching for more information or handy tips on living the good life like Proverbs. It doesn’t contain simple problems or simple answers. Ecclesiastes is one human beings reflection on life and death.   Ecclesiastes is a book about the search for meaning in life.  So what better time for jumping into the deep than Lent.

 Ecclesiastes has been called the most difficult book in the bible. But you know more about it than you think. Let’s do a little experiment.  I’m going to say a phrase and you finish it. “Vanity, Vanity all is VANITY.”  “Eat drink and be MERRY, for tomorrow you may DIE.”  “To everything there is a SEASON.”     “And a time for every purpose under HEAVEN.”  “There is nothing new thing under the SUN.”  “Cast your bread upon the WATERS.”  The phases of Ecclesiastes ring in our ears. We know the questions this book asks in our bones.

 Ecclesiastes has been called the most depressing book in bible.   And more than that Ecclesiastes has been called the most pessimistic book in all of world literature. So this is a book to wrestle with.  During Lent we are going to be like Jacob wrestling with the angel. We won’t let go until we get a blessing. The first thing we are going to battle with in Ecclesiastes is this.  Ecclesiastes is not the most depressing and pessimistic book. It is realistic.  This book asks the questions we ask in the dark of the night, that time between two and four in the morning. Who would write such honest questions?  Well, a wise man would. The tradition is that King Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. The tradition goes that King Solomon wrote the Song of Songs in his virile, passionate youth, Proverbs in his maturity and Ecclesiastes in his elder days. This book is the culmination of all of Solomon’s life and wisdom.  Scholars actually believe a sage in the king’s court in Jerusalem wrote it about 400 BC about 500 years after Solomon.  But the tradition of Solomon does reveal a truth about these three books.  Of the three books, Ecclesiastes is clearly written from the viewpoint of someone who has lived long and hard and well. This teacher is a person who has tried, excitement, sex, possessions, gluttony, many children, hard work and long study.  The Teacher of Ecclesiastes has tried all of those things to bring meaning to life.

 But in our opening Chapter we have a terrible conclusion that all that stuff and all that doing and all that being is vanity. The author is setting the major dilemma of life in front of us so we better understand this word and idea of vanity, and not just vanity but vanity of vanities. The word, “vanity” or hevel in the Hebrew, occurs some 73 times in the Hebrew Bible, 31 of them in Ecclesiastes, twice in the superlative absolute construction, hevel-havalim, “vanity of vanities.” Vanity of Vanities means the most vain, the really, really most of the most-est. The English word “vanity” is a little misleading. We think of vanity and associate it with pride or excessive love or your image or narcissism.  All of those thoughts are true.  But the root word for vanity is the Latin vanitas, which is the quality of being empty. This kind of translation is closer to the meaning of the Hebrew noun here, hevel, which means “breath, vapor, void, futility.” So think of this line vanity, vanity all is vanity, and think of this line empty, empty all is empty or futility of futility all is futile, or vapor of vapor.  I can’t grasp it. I can’t own it. I can’t see ahead. I reach and reach but I come up with nothing, empty. This is much darker and deeper than a shallow preoccupation with appearances.  This kind of vanity is an emptiness of heart and soul. Hevel-havalim is a crisis of meaning.

 This is not an academic question for the teacher. This is a life question. But just to bring this closer to our time I’ll tell you about two people who exemplify this question.

 On is a man we will call “Ted.”  Ted was a very successful. He is in upper level management and has worked really hard, night and day and weekends.  So a thank you his boss gives Ted and his wife an all expense paid vacation to Las Vegas. So they fly to Vegas. They see shows and gamble and eat at buffets and great restaurants. They even go out to Boulder Dam.  It is great. But after a couple of days, Ted gets a little antsy, a little anxious, a little bored. So while his wife is shopping he signs and mopes and then he opens his computer and punches in bordom.com.  But that takes him to a bunch of dating sites.  Well actually the sites are about two or three steps below a dating site. Ted doesn’t want any trouble in his marriage.  So he punches in boredom busters.com and that brings him to silly videos.  After watching prate falls for about fifteen minutes, he turns off the computer and longs to go back to work on Monday.

 Or think of Annie. Annie is a woman who has always loved to cook. So she opens a catering business and it really takes off.  She’s making money, catering interesting events and loving being her own boss. But for the last several months, the excitement she felt at the start has evaporated, and she moves mechanically through her days, doing her work, but without joy.

 These are people who are asking the same question as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes. What do I gain from all my work?  Nothing is new. All things are wearisome. I am tired.  My eyes aren’t satisfied with seeing. My ears aren’t filled with hearing. These people are asking the same question as that old Peggy Lee song “Is this all there is?”  Many people don’t ask that question because they are afraid of the answer.

 
Ecclesiastes drives home some essential truth and a habitual problem we have.  We expect too much from the things we do and the stuff we have.  We ask things and activities to fill the place that God fills in our souls. For example, we ask food replace love.  We ask work to give us meaning.  We ask clothes to give us an identity. We ask our houses or cars or boats to give us importance. We ask our finances to give us safety. We are asking too much of the wrong things. Food is great but it can’t give us love. Clothes can be warm or cozy or fun but they don’t tell us who we are. Things don’t give us direction. Money doesn’t make us safe is a world where we will all die.

 We often pour ourselves into things or projects with such gusto and hope. We work really hard.  I cook a meal hoping it will bring all the love I crave into my home. Then the meal is very nice, but its over and done. By 9:00 pm the meal is really just a pile of dishes in my sink.  We blow all of these things all out of proportion.  The stuff of our life is like balloons that we blow up, huffing and puffing and struggling.  But in the end we are forced to let them go. The air leaks out and we are left with one of life’s most ironic raspberries.  None of the things give us quite the satisfaction we had hoped for, because these things can’t give what is the essence of God with us in our lives.

 This Vanities problem is quite personal to me. As some point in my early 30’s I gave up trying to mesh together my own personal religion and philosophy. I realized I just wasn’t smart enough to do it. I really just drifted into becoming an agnostic. But agnostism led me to a crisis that felt exactly what Ecclesiastes 1 describes.  I realized that my life without God was so empty, so futile, so short, and so meaningless. The teacher of Ecclesiastes trod the same path. He tries all sorts of work and pleasure and treats that give immediate gratification but in the end he concludes, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come.”  The factor in life that imbues it with life or that spark is the divine. The key to significance starts with God.  God provides a baseline of meaning.  Faith provides the mesh that holds us in this giant universe.   I was led to a life of faith because I couldn’t stand the bleakness of the first chapter in our scripture today.

 Faith is the subtlest of shifts in the universe. We stand at the brink of this existential question of existence and meaning. And we puzzle and puzzle, but all is vanity. This puzzling is trapped inside our human limits and it goes round and round.  I believe that God wants to interrupt this futile circle of thoughts. The way out of this circle is to pose one new element.  That element is “GOD IS.”  Let the thought that God is settle into your soul for a bit, then take the next step out of that futile thought circle. Allow yourself to think, God is and God creates.  This allows a further shift from our own limited view to a catching a glimmer, a dim reflection that God is and God creates.  Take a walk in the woods. Look at a snowflake. Look at the power of water or cloud.  The natural world is a powerful force. Then take one more step out of that futile circle to God creates us.  Now there is a snowball effect. We pick up speed.  Instead of living inside our minds of pure and sterile wisdom, we start to interact and allow God to interact with us.  Perhaps we can take the brave leap and step into the story of God and humanity in the bible. It is messy and dirty and sometime confusing. But this history also has triumph and praise and worship and forgiveness and comfort.  Step a little forward now into the Jesus event. God comes down for us.  And you have a purpose and you have work to serve each other and you have joy in the gift of life and you have an identity as the person God loves.  This is the spiritual homecoming to which bareness of Ecclesiastes 1 will eventually lead.  

 Ecclesiastes starts with the deepest questions.  The good news is that we don’t have to be fearful of the answers.  We can just recognize what is.  Vanity and Vanities of Vanity describes WHAT IS without God. But neither you nor I need to live without God. We are invited to live in God.

Amen.

Why Bother ... with Healing Prayer? The Rev. Connie Frierson James 5:13-18 The Prayer of Faith Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest. Why Bother ... with Healing Prayer, Preached 1-27-13 by The Rev. Connie Frierson We are asking the question, “Why bother?” in this sermon series. And we are asking that of lots of religious practices. We have asked, “Why bother with worship? Why bother with reading the bible?” So this morning we are asking why bother with healing prayer? So I thought I would start with a tale of two women. Their stories will help us see why we are so doubtful about prayer and whether or not it works. It shows how we struggle to see God involved in everything of life. These two women were very dear to me. One I had known all my life the other I knew really only two months. Nora- (not her real name) was a wonderful faithful woman. In many ways she set an example for me of how to deal with adversity, how to trust God, how to live and act with kindness. Perhaps one of the most wonderful things she taught me was how to be happy, really happy, even if the externals of life weren’t exactly what we wanted. As Nora grew older she moved into a nursing home and I visited her about once a week. One afternoon I walked into her room and I knew that this visit would be different from any other visit. Nora was in her dying time. I had been through many health crises with Nora, but I knew this one was different. I called home and told my husband that I needed to stay with Nora and asked if he could care for the kids. And so I stayed. All of us have an idea of how we would like to die. We picture it with dignity. We see death coming gently to us as we are surrounded by loved ones. Perhaps poignant words of love are said at the last. Maybe we hope to see the light of Christ coming towards us or departed loved ones welcoming us home…. Well none of that happened. This was a gritty, panting, painful, sweaty, agitated transition from living to dead. I sat with Nora and tried to hold her hand, but she was in such distress she couldn’t be touched. I tried to read the bible but to tell the truth I couldn’t find the right passages and it just seemed annoying. It was a hard, painful death. Nora struggled so to breath. It was hours of slow suffocation, as her lungs became more water logged. It was terrible. I badgered the nurses but it didn’t seem as though they were able to do anything. I asked them again and again. Finally, in desperation I sang old hymns in my silly, thin reedy voice. I sang, “Into the Garden” The Old Rugged Cross” “Amazing Grace” “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me” I sang every word of God’s love I could remember. After about the 10th time through “Into the Garden” one of the nurses brought me a dusty old hymnal, (probably out preservation for the little sanity she had left.) Those imperfect, songs in my marginal voice were the prayers that seemed to reach Nora. Her breathing was still agonizing but she seemed calmer. I did lots of prayer that night. The prayer was to relieve this suffering. Eventually Nora’s suffering was lifted and she died. But I thought God was acting about five hours too late. Years passed and I became a hospice volunteer. One of the reasons I became a volunteer was that Hospice knows how to make people more comfortable. Doctors can really know how to fight disease. Nursing Homes can be good with the chronic problems of aging. But often neither knows about palliative end of life care. Hospice does. I volunteered with Helen at Passivant. But I almost didn’t meet Helen. I got a call from the Hospice office asking me to visit a woman named Helen. And I said, “No, I’m too busy.” A week later, Graham asked me if I would be willing to visit a woman named Helen. And I said, “No, I’m too busy.” Then a week later, a friend of mind mentioned that I really should meet a woman named Helen. At that point I figured God was talking to me. I called Hospice and I became Helen’s visitor. Our first visits were really fun. Helen had worked in publishing for years and specialized in children’s books. I was reading Harry Potter to her and we were having a ball. But on my third visit everything changed. I came in and she was in terrible distress. Drenched in sweat, chest pains couldn’t breath. Helen looked like a flashback to that terrible night with Nora. I called home to Al again and said I would be late. That I needed to stay. It was so similar to Nora. But this time I was really more forceful with the nurses. I got them to call the doctor and get authorization for stronger narcotics. I bathed Helen’s face with cool cloths and massaged her hands. She turned to me and she said, “I was praying that you would come and you did. God answered my prayer.” It wasn’t what Helen said it was how she said it. She was extreme, concentrated intensity, all or nothing, completely in this moment. I was with Helen that day. She died peacefully. She had the answer to her prayer. This tale of two women points out the terrible difficulty with prayer and particularly healing prayer. We pray in times of dire extreme need. We focus intensely on the only answer that we want to hear from God. And if that event, healing, moment or sign doesn’t happen then we are baffled, hurt or angry. Does prayer work? Or are we fools. Does prayer change what is outside of us, or does it only change us? If God knows everything then why pray at all, doesn’t he know what we want or need anyway? Those are the questions. Prayer? Why bother? We bother because healing prayer does work. It always works. But now always in ways we understand or want. In the past twenty years there has been an explosion of studies to prove or disprove the power of prayer. Even ten years ago there were over 130 controlled studies on intercessory prayer, greater than half show prayer had significant effect, 250 studies show religious practice promotes health. The majority of these double blind studies show positive results. But the results still refuse to line up to neatly. So skeptics still get to doubt and believers still get to believe. If you read this literature what you see is that Healing Prayer is a wild card. It appears to do good but they can’t predict it. This reminds me of how the Scots think of the Holy Spirit. The Celtic Spirituality sees the Holy Spirit not as the gentle dove coming down from heaven. But more like the wild goose, loud and brash and with a mind and movement all of it’s own. We want to call in Healing prayer like precision-guided bombs, a surgical strike behind enemy lines. But the wild goose has a direction that we don’t always know or predict. We have no idea how or where or when the healing will take place. This reminds me of the Story of Sister Mary. Sister Mary was a catholic nun and teacher. She lived in community and had terrible pain in her ankles from arthritis. Sister Mary was rather shy and restrained and the thought of asking for healing prayer was not her cup of tea. But the pain in her ankles prodded her to give this a try. So she met with a healing prayer group and they prayed for her ankles. But in the end her ankles still hurt. But her ear that had been deaf since childhood was healed. She could hear more easily without straining and it made teaching and interacting with other people so much easier. She had no idea that this was a problem, but once she heard better she could live and talk and listen better. But her ankles still hurt. So she went back to the healing prayer group. They prayed for poor sister Mary’s ankles, but nope. They still hurt. But the arthritis in her elbows was so much better. She was able to go to the board in the classroom without that little pang of pain that she had even failed to notice. That little pain meant every time she went to the board, she scowled. The kids saw that and they scowled. But Sister Mary’s ankles still hurt. Later the healing prayer group prayed again, but no ankle healing. Only a marvelous sense of God’s love infused Sister Mary and energized her work. She started to look at her students with a little of that love that she felt God had towards her. It made all the difference. Her work as a teacher was more playful, more joyous, and more compassionate. But, Sister Mary still has sore ankles. But if you ask her she will just say they haven’t been healed yet. We have lots of problems with our conditions and expectations not being met by healing prayer. So I think some of the guidelines offered by Tilda Norberg and Robert Webber might be helpful. Tilda is an ordained Methodist minster and therapist. Robert Webber is also a minister and together they wrote together a book called "Stretch Out Your Hand; Exploring Healing Prayer." Here are some of their points. 1. Christian healing is not magic. It is not manipulating God to do what we want; rather, it is surrendering to God’s healing work in us. What a disappointment. I really want magic. We all do, because magic gives us the illusion of controlling the uncontrollable. We crave magic like we crave great wealth or winning the lottery. We think, “ahhh then I will be safe” But the only safe place in the vast universe is the center of God’s will. So healing prayer opens us up to what God will do. We in fact are opening our arms. Giving up what we want to ask God for healing. We can pray specifically and concretely. But then we watch and wait expectantly and expansively. 2. Christian faith for healing is not a prediction of what God will do; it is simple trust that God loves us and is at work in us already. Thank goodness we don’t have to predict. This is where we fall and fail. We want the certainty of prediction but God wants the relationship of trust. Predicting the future smacks of that same magical thinking that we slip into about our needs. But the uncertainty of what will happen next requires us to be open, flexible and trusting. Thank Goodness that our healing doesn’t depend on our faith alone. While Jesus occasionally commends a person’s faith it isn’t required. Over two thirds of Jesus healings make no mention of the person’s faith. While sometimes Jesus has said, “Your faith has made you well.” Most of the time there is not mention of faith. Some even confess doubt. Remember the father who cried out, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” This is a great burden lifted from our shoulders. Do you recall the Disney version of Peter Pan? I recall sitting on the floor of my childhood living room on a Sunday night watching Wald Disney at the age of four. In one scene Tinker Bell is dying. Oh! No! We must save Tink! And everyone has to believe in magic and clap his or her hands or Tinker Bell will die. There I was a little skeptical kid, and maybe I was killing Tinker Bell if I couldn’t muster the proper good thoughts. We too often have the same childish misconception about faith and healing. We think it is our faith that heals. So if we can’t screw up our right beliefs system to a proper intensity, then we are doomed. Thankfully, God is willing to work with us on our faith and to help it grow. 3. Christian healing is not to be sought as a spiritual thrill for the healer or the person healed, but it is a way to grow as a Christian. Have you noticed we seem to turn about everything into entertainment? Perhaps there is a litmus test for healing prayer that we need to use. What is the tip off that this is human hype and not openness to the divine? If there is a great show of spiritual power, if healing requires special hats, powders, religious kitsch, complicated procedure and money, --- run. How much better it is to turn to your friend in the church, an ordinary person in your community who will seriously and calmly pray and just say, “Could we pray together? Will you pray for me?” Healing is a process not an entertainment event. And the purpose is growth. Ever wonder what happened to all those lepers Jesus healed? What happened? Did they start a club, form a volleyball team, become the living examples of gratitude and trust and wisdom. They were changed. Healing is transformation – individual, inner and outer, communal, societal. I like to think of them as returning home to become the sages of their villages, just little pools of trust and light for their friends and family. 4. Christian healing is not proof that we are faithful or holy but is a sign of God’s love. Jesus did mainly two things. He preached and he healed. Both of those things were about bringing the love of God into the world. We are in the process of healing right now. So healing prayer is just as simple as this opening to the divine touch. Allowing us to be healed, emotionally, spiritually and physically. It is healing individually and as a community and even as a world. I started this talk by sharing the story of the deaths of two women and the prayers that surrounded them. As I look back there was healing in both instances. Sometimes it is healing through medical intervention, sometimes through the passage of time, sometimes miraculously, and sometimes through the passage from this life to the next. In both Nora and Helen’s time God was there. Nora was a woman who would have sacrificed anything for others. Her hard death changed me. It changed my commitment to what is important in life. In a crazy twisted path, I am in ministry because or that night. Perhaps in some way Nora needed to face life and death straight on in this heroic struggle. I don’t know but I am willing to trust that Nora is well. In the same way I am willing to trust that Helen is well. In all Helen’s independent, strong life she had not leaned or depended on others. But in this final time, she needed someone to show her love and God did answer her prayer. When you do healing prayer long enough you come to understand that the people you pray with are well and can be well and that even I am well. One word of advise, don’t wait to open to healing prayer on the last ditch, what the heck, might as well pray final effort. If you do, you miss out on all the healing in between now and then. Amen.

Why Bother,... with a Church Community?

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Acts 2:37-47

February 10, 2013

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.’ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

            It’s actually quite amazing that I’m standing here preaching to you today, because I could not have imagined this in 1983. Back then I believed that church was worthless, and that it actually got in the way of being spiritually healthy. This was not the same as saying that I didn’t care about God, or that I wasn’t spiritual. I was ahead of my time in declaring myself “spiritual but not religious.” That doesn’t mean that I was right in declaring myself to be “spiritual but not religious.” In fact, I was wrong.

            I was a product of so much that I had surrounded myself with in the late 1970s and early 80s. I had been delving into all sorts of eastern religious ideas, and in what now would be considered New Age ideas. Also, I was a product of my college major. I was a psychology major and was immersed in the thinking of 80s psychologists. They generally believed that church was for weak-minded people. A fair number of psychologists had declared that religious participation was a sign of (at worst) mental illness, or (at best) mental dysfunction. I thought the same way as them. I even clearly remember a conversation I had with a friend, when I said, “Christianity only gets in our my way. It keeps us from discovering who God really is.” In a lot of ways I was ahead of my time, because that’s the view many people have today of church. That doesn’t mean they are any more right than I was, but it is their perspective.

            Over time I discovered that this view of spirituality is really a highly American view, and it is one that, ironically, pulls us away from God. What led me to eventually become a pastor was that I ended up in a situation in which I had to deeply question my beliefs, and in the process I discovered the deeper path that God leads us on.

            You may or may not be all that interested in my transformation, but hopefully you won’t mind my sharing it with you anyway. It all began when I left my job in a psychiatric hospital in early 1983. I had been working as a therapist with teens and children. It was right after a particularly violent time in the hospital. There had been several mini-riots among the teens, and I was in the middle of one of them. At a teen dance several kids had gotten upset, one especially with me, and they started fighting staff and each other. Chairs were thrown, tables were overturned, and one kid punched me in the face. After grabbing him and holding him down, things slowly calmed, but I was shaken. Was this really what I wanted to do with my life?

            At the same time, we had a number of teens with a penchant for violence, including one who was caught with a small, hand-made weapon intended to hurt me. He had taken apart a clothes hanger, and then bent it so that when he made a fist, two jagged prongs would jut out between his fingers. The idea was that when he hit me with it the hanger would do a lot of damage to my face.

            I became burned-out. I didn’t know if I wanted to do this kind of work anymore, and I couldn’t understand why God would put me in such a bad situation. I couldn’t understand why God would allow me to be the target of violence when I cared so much about these kids, and was appreciated so much by the other 98% of them. So I quit, moved back home, and looked for another job.

            This was back in 1983, when the unemployment rate in the Pittsburgh area was 12%. I felt isolated, embarrassed to be back home as an adult, unable to find another job, and lonely. Again, I couldn’t understand why God would allow me to go through this experience. It was in the midst of this that I sensed I had been doing faith and spirituality on my own for too long. I started going to church. In January of 1984 I decided to join the church.

            My joining surprised the senior pastor of the church because he knew me as a steadfast spiritual independent. He asked me to come to his house to talk after church one day, so that we could discuss my joining. We sat in his living room, and he asked me, “Why do you want to join the church now? You’ve been so determined to go a different path up till now.” I opened my mouth to respond with the very articulate answer I had worked out ahead of time, anticipating his question, but I couldn’t get it out. I started to cry. I started to sob. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t really speak. The best I could do was to say, “I… can’t… do it… on… my… own… anymore.” I repeated that over and over.

            This was a significant event for me because it was my admitting that my solo spiritual path was a failure. I was admitting that all that independence I thought I had, all that spiritual self-reliance I thought I had, was a failure. I needed others. I needed a church. What a defeat! What an epiphany!

            I was so impacted by my experience with the pastor, both in my epiphany and in my joining the church, that it became the basis of my Ph.D. dissertation 12 years later, which was titled, From Individualistic to Communal Spirituality.

            Several months ago I spoke about the problem of forging a solo spiritual path. I mentioned that the biggest problem people have when they go their own path is that they adopt all sorts of spiritual wisdom and practices from different religions, but then they never adopt the one thing that is really common and essential to all of them, which is the communal part of it. The fact is that there is no spiritual tradition that emphasizes the individual over the communal. None. Every major religion emphasizes that to be truly spiritual requires community. This individualistic spirituality is an American tradition, but it is foreign to Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, shamanistic tribal religions, and Christianity. All of them stress that to grow closer to God, or whatever they understand God to be, we have to grow closer to each other. The main reason they emphasize this is that they all understand that a connection with the Holy means connection with each other.

Our associate pastor, Connie Frierson, talked about this two years ago in a really good sermon. Well,… all of her sermons are good. Anyway, she mentioned a groundbreaking book from 1985, Habits of the Heart, that studied American individualism. The book was written by a sociologist, Robert Bellah, and his team of researchers. They looked both at American society today, and throughout our history, and noted that Americans have always prized individualism, self-reliance, and independence. He noted that during the latter part of the 20^th century a new kind of religion was forming, which he called Sheilaism. He coined the term after interviewing a woman named Sheila Larson, who told him that “I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism.  Just my own little voice…  It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself.”  Bellah and his researchers noticed that Americans were creating their own religion based on their own beliefs, and that Sheila wasn’t alone. The problem is that, from every religion’s perspective, this path doesn’t quite lead effectively to God.

            We live in an individualistic culture, and our individualism actually does us a lot of harm. It’s led to a lack of commitment in relationships, marriages, parenting, workplaces, and so many other areas of life. It also leads to divisiveness because each of us believes our own truth is THE TRUTH. We aren’t always that open to other people’s perspectives on truth. I believe it also leads to high rates of depression. Worldwide studies have shown that the U.S., along with France, have the highest rates of depression in the world. We are also the two most individualistic countries. Between 19% and 21% in both countries report suffering from depression. The lowest rates of depression tend to come from lower income countries that emphasize community much more than we do. We have more money, possessions, opportunities than anywhere else, but we are also more depressed.

            Our individualistic approach also harms us in terms of our commitments, our ability to work together, and our susceptibility to depression. Still, what’s wrong with individualism when it comes to spirituality? Let me make two suggestions.

            First, an individualistic spirituality ends up making each of us a false spiritual expert, meaning we end up deciding who God is and what God wants, ignoring what the deep spiritual traditions teach. Simply put, we create God, spirituality, and religion in our own image. I’ve learned something from my dog, which is that given a choice she would never eat anything healthy, do what is good for her, or engage in totally healthy activities. She has to be trained to do so. If it was up to her, she would eat chocolate all day, which is poisonous for dogs, go to the farm field next door and eat cow manure, walk in the middle of the road, and poop in the house. She is very Aurora-focused. We tend to be similar when we create our own religions. We wouldn’t necessarily include others, we would make the path easy on ourselves, and we wouldn’t require a whole lot. And we would consume only those things that taste good spiritually, even if they made us spiritually sick. We would create religion according to our own desires, meaning that we would probably move further away from God than we thought we were, yet all the while we’d be thinking we were moving closer to God. In effect, when we choose an individualistic path, we end up creating God and religion in our own image, including in it all of our own faults and foibles.

            A church community overcomes this tendency by giving us a tradition to follow that is God-focused, not self-focused. It pushes us by training us to do spiritual things alone and TOGETHER that draw us closer to God.

            Second, spiritual individualism leads us to create God-substitutes. We tend to glorify things that appeal to us, or make us feel better, but that don’t necessarily lead to God. You can see this all throughout our culture. We worship sports, wealth, sex, exercise, drugs and alcohol, and anything that gives us a rush or a sense of power and imperviousness. It’s not that most of these things are bad in and of themselves. We just glorify them to a point at which one, two, or all of them become obsessions.

            What a church community does, when we are willing to work to be part of it, is that it pushes us to move beyond selfishness, self-focus, and self-reliance. It moves us more into God’s love by pushing us to connect with people we normally might ignore. I had a revelation early on in my ministry at Calvin Presbyterian Church. I was sitting in a session meeting and a thought popped up in my head. I looked around and thought, “These are the coolest people on earth. They’re working so well together and caring so much about each other. They are just so cool! And they are NOT the kind of people I would normally hang out with.” My epiphany was that churches create communities where we interact with, care about, and work with people we would never bother to get to know on our own.

            Think about your own experience in church. Are the people you’ve come to care about the people you would have done stuff with, or even become friends with, on your own? Are they people you would have cherished or even valued on your own? That’s the power of church community. It connects us with God’s vision of life, which is that we are to love each other without condition, no matter how different we all might be. That’s what it’s done for me. I now have relationships with people I might never have ever met, or done anything with otherwise.

            When you’re part of a church, you’re part of something special that opens you to each other, to God, and to life in a way that transcends what you can do on your own. And here’s the best part: you’re doing it right now!

            Amen.

Why Bother,... with Mission

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1 Corinthians 16:1-4

February 3, 2013

Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

            I want to start with some pet peeves this morning. I want to rant and rave about some statements I’ve heard over the years regarding mission in the church. They aren’t necessarily said in this church. They’re just statements I’ve heard Christians say over the years that kinda bug me. For example, have you ever heard someone say, “Why should we send our money to places like Africa or South America when we have enough poor here to take care of”? Of course you have. Maybe you’ve even said it. It bugs me, though, because I always wonder if God sees things the same way. I wonder if God says, “You know, that fella over there really shouldn’t send money to Africa to help the crushingly poor when there’s enough for him to do in his own country.”

            Another comment I hear at times is “It’s nice to give to the poor and all, but how do we know they’ll use our charity for something worthwhile?” How many times have you said this or even heard it? Why does it bug me? Because God seems to care much more about whether or not we love, than about how effective our love is. God doesn’t say, “give only to people who’ve proved their worthiness!” God says, “love others as ourselves, lay down our lives for others, treat others as better than ourselves,” and more.

            Also, have you heard anyone who has said this: “Why should we give to people who refuse to take care of themselves—who refuse to lift themselves up like I did. I lifted myself up by my bootstraps. They should, too.” The irony is that everyone who says that they’ve lifted themselves up by the bootstraps ignores the fact that so many people in their lives, from parents to teachers to coaches to friends to strangers, have helped them along the way. They’ve also ignored those who gave them opportunities, loans, and more. Also, God’s way isn’t to only help those who are worthy, but to see all as worthy of love.

            The basic problem with the thinking behind these statements is that it misses the point of mission. Mission isn’t about the results, it’s about Love. Christian mission has a simple source: love of God, love of others, a love of serving God and others. Christian mission doesn’t care so much who we love, or who we serve in love.  The central idea in Christian mission is THAT we love, and THAT we serve.

            This idea and emphasis comes out clearly in our passage for this morning, if we are willing to dig a little deeper to understand it. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth about a mission to widows in Jerusalem. Corinth is a sophisticated Greek city filled with wealthy and educated Romans and Greeks. It rested on the isthmus between the northern and southern parts of the Greek peninsula. The Romans and Greeks had built a roller system across the twenty-mile isthmus at Corinth where ships could be pulled out of the water, dragged across land, and put back in the water on the other side; thus avoiding the winter storms and rocks that plagued the southern coastline. These Corinthians, being sophisticated, wealthy people really didn’t care much about the poor widows in Jerusalem. These widows, abandoned by their own families, and their dead husbands’ families, were often left to beg or become prostitutes. One of the first missions of the Christian church was to care for them. But why should the Corinthians care about them? These widows were in a backwater part of the Roman Empire, and they were Jews. So what if they struggle?

            The same questions could be asked of the Galatians, who were mentioned in the passage. They lived in north-central Turkey, a mountainous and isolated area. They were of Celtic descent, and had little to do with the Jews. Why should they care about widows in Jerusalem when there were enough people in their own backyard to care for? Besides, what if the widows misused these funds? What if the collected money didn’t get to them or was misspent? Paul faced the same questions about mission that we do today. But Paul emphasized that part of being a Christian was caring for those we don’t know by taking up collections for them. And we do this because God calls us to do so.

            One of the biggest challenges to Christian mission today is that we don’t live in particularly loving times. When people talk about the problems of our culture, they tend to be more “Me” and “I” focused. They say things like, “MY taxes are too high. They want to limit MY guns. Why should I care about people who are poor and struggling? What is the government doing for ME? How is the government oppressing ME?  How is any of this good for ME?“ We don’t talk publically as much about who we should reach out to and care for. This is not a comment about gun control or taxes. It’s a comment about how ME-focused the ruling generation is.

            Ironically, the younger generation (many of whom consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” because of how ME-focused Christians seem to be) is often very focused on caring about others. For example, have you noticed how many of Seneca Valley’s senior projects are focused on raising money to help some organization, group, or people. This generation is very “other” and “them” focused. So many of them are dropping out of church, but holding onto the Christian ideal of loving others. My lament is that I wish they would also root their love of others in a deep, deep love of God because that would actually enhance their ability to love others. The point, though, is that they understand the need to love.

            As Christians, what matters is that we love not just in mind, but through our actions It’s not enough to say that we love. We also need TO love. And that love has to be rooted in God first.

            There’s a big mission movement in the Presbyterian Church right now, which I think is a good thing. But one problem with it is that it is not quite rooted in the biblical model of mission. Biblically, mission is a mark of Christian maturity, not an entry point into religion. The most powerful mission of the Bible is carried out ,not by young Christians, but by the most mature Christians. The reason is that mission is a response to God’s grace and love. We reach out best in mission when it is rooted in a deep desire to share God’s love, and when time is spent in prayer seeking how we are called to share that love.

            Something that you wouldn’t necessarily know about Calvin Presbyterian Church is that we have a guiding paradigm that not only helps us understand how to develop programs in the church, but that also helps guide us in moving people to become mature Christians who naturally want to reach out to others in mission.

            We developed this paradigm about 12 years ago on the Spiritual Nurture Committee, and it subtly guides us. We realized that in looking at the gospels, there are really four levels of Christian maturity represented. There are Onlookers, Followers, Disciples, and Sent Ones (really they are “apostles,” but calling them that seemed grandiose). What we try to do is to create programs in the church that help move people one level up so that they move, step-by-step, toward becoming more mature and more mission-minded. Here’s an explanation of the four levels:

1. Onlookers: These are the people who mainly come to church on Christmas, Easter, and other occasions. They like the church, they can be inspired by the church, but their commitment level is really low. They’re not sure they understand the value of church, so they’re a bit ambivalent about it. Our question is how we help them to move to the next level. The main program we use to move them is to try to make our worship service and Sunday morning experience as accessible and inspirational as possible. Our music is varied, we try to make our preaching dynamic and deep, and we try to be as friendly and hospitable as possible. What we hope to do, through worship, is to help them want to become followers. By the way, the model for understanding onlookers is a scene from the Monty Python film, Life of Brian. In it, Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and the camera pulls back. You see Jesus’ disciples crowded close to him, then his followers on the hillside and up the next hill. Finally, three hills away, the onlookers watch and listen. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But the onlookers can’t quite hear him. So one says, “What did he say?” Another replies, “He said, ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.’” The first asks, “Well why are the cheesemakers so blessed?” The other replies, “He’s not talking about cheesemakers per se. He’s talking about anyone in a trade.”  The point is that onlookers want to hear the Gospel, but they don’t quite get close enough, and then they mishear and misinterpret what we Christians say, preach, and do.

2. Followers: These are folks who are either new to faith, or inexperienced in in-depth study on matters of faith. They are more committed, and want to live a more spiritual life. What holds them back is that they have so many commitments: family, work, friends, sports, dance, theater, social organizations, and so much more. We have a lot of programs to help move them from being followers to disciples, such as youth groups & teen Bible studies, the Beth Moore Group, Sunday adult education, Financial Peace University, and our new member classes. These are designed to move people deeper, and hopefully make them want to become disciples.

3. Disciples: These are people who have a yearning to move deeper into the Christian life, and to become a “disciple,” a student, of Christ. Their focus becomes much more deeply on learning how to live as Christ’s servants and friends. The programs we offer to move people from discipleship to becoming “sent ones” are our Tuesday and Wednesday devotional groups, our Science & Spirituality Group, the Presbyterian Women’s circles, the Tuesday Centering Prayer Group, the Thursday Morning Prayer Group, the Men’s Group, and our committees and session. I put the last two here, but you’ll also find them also among the “sent ones.” We start every committee meeting and session meeting with 30-45 minutes of prayer and study. The point is that we help our leaders move from discipleship to apostleship.

4. Sent Ones: These are technically are “apostles”(in Greek, ἀπόστολος or ”apostolos”). These are those ready to serve God in Mission and Ministry, choosing to be Christ’s hands, feet, and voice in the world. They include our session and committee members. These are the ones with the maturity to serve in mission because they have a real desire to make a difference. And if you look at Calvin Presbyterian Church, you find a lot of “sent ones.” I want to share with you a list of the mission we are doing at Calvin Presbyterian Church, because it is impressive. What it really says about us is that we have a spiritually mature congregation. The main reason I say this is that this isn’t centralized mission sparked by a central committee. Most of it comes from members who say, “I feel called to do this.”  Here’s the list:

·      Mission Trips: Each year Calvin Church sends out three mission trips. Two are for youth to work at Camp Westminster on Higgins Lake in Michigan. Camp Westminster is a ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church of Detroit, and is devoted to giving inner-city children an opportunity to discover and learn about nature, while also growing spiritually. The other mission trip is to the Wayside Christian Mission in Louisville, Kentucky. Wayside is devoted to helping people with homelessness, addictions, and other urban problems.

·      Project Hope: Project Hope of Zelienople, Inc. Is an organization dedicated to inspiring HOPE during the traumatic event of a child’s unexpected or long-term hospitalization. We provide support and encouragement for families during this stressful time. We believe parents and guardians must take care of themselves physically, emotionally and spiritually in order to meet the needs of their hospitalized children.

·      Special Mission Fund: Calvin Church is committed to helping people locally and in the region meet their basic needs and respond to crisis. The Special Mission Fund is a fund we use to respond when people are in need. Through this fund we have helped abused women pay for new housing, families in need buy food and other needs, support missionaries, support families in which the primary provider has become suddenly unemployed, pay medical expenses for families facing medical emergencies, help with disaster relief, support medical clinics in Africa, buy sleeping bags for the homeless, support the work of shelters for the homeless and abused women, aid in the building of a library in Columbia, send books to a pastor in Uganda, and so many other needs.

·      The Zelienople Food Cupboard: The Zelienople Food Cupboard offers food and other essentials to families in need. We do this with other churches in the area.

·      The Ladle and the Hearth Ministry: Several times a year Calvin members provide and serve meals at the Ladle, an organization that provides a hot meal every Monday to the hungry in the Ambridge community. We serve about 60-90 people per meal.

·      Clean Water for Connoquenessing Families: Calvin Church has teamed up with several other churches to provide clean water for 31 neighbors in Connoquenessing Township whose water has become tainted. While the local government attempts to determine if it was related to drilling in the area, the church has been the collection point for water contributions from Calvin and other churches. We have joined with others to provide over 200 gallons of clean water a week.

·      SERRV: Calvin Church warehouses products for SERRV’s ministry in the region, as well as hosting a SERRV Sale in the church every year. SERRV is a nonprofit organization with a mission to eradicate poverty by providing opportunity and support to artisans and farmers worldwide. It markets their crafts and foods, finds joint solutions to their challenges, and helps them grow and embrace the future. One of the first alternative trade organizations in the world, SERRV is a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization and a founding member of the Fair Trade Federation.

·      The Green Team: Calvin Church is committed to being Green. We have created a task force called the Green Team that oversees ways to make us greener, such as florescent and LED lighting, recycling church and member paper, using recycled paper, low-flush facilities, and more.

·      Campus Ministers at Kenyon College: Calvin Church has helped to support Jen and Zane Sanders, Christian Coalition Campus Ministers, as they minister to college students at Kenyon College

·      Mission Trip Support: Calvin Church is committed to being a permission-giving, mission-supporting congregation that nurtures and encourages everyone’s personal calling to mission. We find ways to raise funds and offer other support for individuals called to mission. Over the past few years we’ve supported members helping to build a preschool in South Africa, a medical mission to Lithuania, and disaster relief and clean-up in Joplin, Missouri.

·      30-Hour Famine: We sponsor an annual 30-hour fast to raise awareness and funds for hunger projects supported by World Vision, an international hunger and relief organization.

·      Wounded Warrior Project: Calvin Church has collected and sent backpacks and plastic containers for hospitalized troops in Afghanistan.

·      Presbyterian Church (USA) Disaster Relief: Calvin Church periodically provides funds to support the work of our denomination’s Disaster Relief organization, which has helped people recover from earthquakes in Pakistan and Haiti, tornados and hurricanes in Missouri and Louisiana, and much more.

·      Other Mission We Support

o   Samaritan Counseling Center

o   Oikocredit

o   Hot Metal Church

o   The Alliance Against Drugs

o   Bread for the World

o   VOICe

o   The Heiffer Project

o   The American Cancer Society Relay for Life

·      Peace Candles: On the pedestal behind the communion table, you will find peace candles. If you are a visitor to Calvin Church or a member planning to visit another church in the next few weeks, we invite you to take a votive with you. Present it to your church or the one you’re visiting on behalf of Calvin Church as a reminder to pray for peace.

·      Gifts that Matter: Calvin offers its members an alternative to buying gifts for loved ones at Christmas. Donations may be made to a charity in honor or memory of someone. A certificate is mailed to the honoree informing him/her of the donation in his/her name

·      Financial Peace University: This is a program that teaches a biblical, spiritual, and practical way of handling money. Through video teaching, class discussions, and interactive small group activities, FPU presents practical steps to get financial stability and peace. This shows how to get rid of debt, manage your money, spend and save wisely, and much more.  So many people struggle financially but don’t know where to turn. This program, developed by internationally known consultant Dave Ramsey, has helped thousands get their finances, and lives, in order.  The 90-minute classes meets Thursday evenings for 9 weeks from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.

·      Narcotics Anonymous: Calvin Church hosts a Narcotics Anonymous meeting for those in recovery from addiction.  The meetings are on Wednesday evenings from 7-8 p.m.

·      Zelienople Nursery School: Zelienople Nursery School holds 3yr old and 4yr old half-day classes in the lower level of Calvin Presbyterian Church. Three year olds attend Thursday and Friday AM or PM. Four year olds attend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday AM or PM.

            What I’ve given you is a listing, but there is much more personal mission going on. For instance, the Stubenborts have been so inspired by the Wayside mission trips we do each year that they started taking Karen’s BC3 social work students down at Thanksgiving to serve Thanksgiving meals there. Our Financial Peace University started because Bethany Shreckengost said to me, “I’ve been blessed by so much that I want to give back to God by offering these classes.” We also support the Circle of Friends Choir, which was a community choir that performs as a way of raising funds for many local and regional charities. They started out, painfully, from a conflict in a local church that caused them to part ways with the church. There were about fifteen of them without a church, and they decided to turn their choir in to a service to God. They have now grown to about 40—way beyond their original size. And they practice here every Tuesday night.

            The key in all of this is that we have a mantra here, which is that we only do mission over which we’ve prayed about and feel called to. We don’t do mission out of guilt or a sense of “should” or “ought.” We do it because God calls us to it, and that’s why you’ve seen an explosion of mission in this church. The mission in our church is done because people are called, not coerced. 

            As a way of summing up this morning, you are called to grow ever deeper as a Christian, and as you do, you are called to become increasingly God-focused, other-focused, and love focused. So,… where’s your mission?

            Amen.