Wheels, Wonders and Waiting

Isaiah 64:1-9 (NRSV)
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.

You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the hand of iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are your people.

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We didn’t have quite as many folks over to the house as Mickey did down the street, but the parsonage seemed plenty full this week as our family members came from across the bay to celebrate with us. Yesterday we were finally able to stop and catch our breath, munch on a turkey sandwich and give thanks that we had survived and that it had been such a good time. And today I have to gird myself up because today is the first day of a new Christian year and it’s a tough time to be a preacher.

‘Why is that?’ you ask? Well, today is the day when every good preacher stands up in the pulpit, stretches his or her arms out dramatically and says to the Christmas culture surrounding that pulpit, “Stop! Proceed no further! I reject your crass commercialization and unbridled materialism! I despise your tinsel-coated shopping malls and your barking dog “Jingle Bells” records. I abhor your silly little TV Christmas specials starring has-been singers and your wanton disregard for the true Christmas story. I refuse your compulsion to sing Christmas carols from the first Sunday of October and the annoying way you let everyone from Shania Twain to William Shatner sing them. I laugh at your pathetic obsession with the Grinch because you have nothing else to say about this holiday since you have stripped it of its true meaning. I…I will stand in the breach and proclaim the season of Advent. I will single-handedly bring to a halt the motion of the wheels of commerce. Hear this word, Christmas culture: God has seen what you have done to Advent and God is not happy.”

That’s what every good preacher does on the first Sunday of the new Christian year—this Sunday. But I am a different kind of preacher and, since I have often felt absolutely unheard in any Advent season of the past, this year I’m ready to say to the culture, “O.K., let’s do it your way.” I mean…Advent is a season of preparation and waiting, but we don’t know how to wait anymore as a culture so why force something on folks that seems irrelevant to them? Advent is also a season of expectation…expecting God to come among us, not only remembering how God came the first time in Jesus, but looking ahead to God coming again to set all things right, to make all things new. And who among us is expecting the imminent coming of God? Like the coming of a Wal-mart to the Eastern Shore…it’s a relic from the expectations of Christmas past.

So maybe we should be all caught up in the hustle and bustle. It’s an exciting world out there. I read in the paper yesterday about the people camping out at the doors of shopping centers on Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving. In our home paper a few years ago they interviewed a woman who had come down for the 6 AM opening of the Wal-Mart on Black Friday. She said that being there for the event kind of put her in the Christmas spirit, except for the fight that broke out when the doors actually did open. She said she liked the sense of competition. It put a little thrill into the season.

I know that there is a lot going on in the next few weeks -- work, exams, last minute details, travel -- but surely you can handle a little more stress. You are pros at this - especially if you have kids. You can pack that schedule a little tighter with holiday parties and shopping and still be on top of your game. And all of the statistics that show that this season can be one of the loneliest times for people should not have you singing “Blue Christmas.” Or maybe it should.
Maybe it’s not such a good idea for the church to give up to the madness around us. Maybe there does need to be a voice in the wilderness saying, “Prepare the way for the Lord.” Maybe there does need to be the expectation that things will be different…that things are different. I’m just being silly really. The church needs Advent.

So the Church changes its colors to blue and purple—colors associated with waiting and royalty. And we bring out the Advent wreath. Do you know where the Advent wreath comes from? The candles come from long liturgical tradition, but the actual wreath is, (and please don’t tell anybody), pagan. Northern European. Think Scotland. Actually, think Scotland in December. It is so far north that about this time of the year the sun doesn’t rise until late in the morning and it goes down by mid-afternoon. It’s a dark place in the waning days of the year. When I lived in northern England for a winter I learned how dreary it can be.

It was strange for us, but it was even stranger, I imagine, for my early Scottish ancestors, living in the time before the message of Christ arrived, who began to wonder if the shorter days meant that the sun was starting to abandon the earth. Maybe, they might have even wondered, it was their fault that the sun was abandoning the earth, so they faced these days with guilt and anxiety. (Even though they were pagan they were still good Protestants.)

But what they did when this happened was not to let the darkness go unnoticed and to pretend that nothing was wrong. They stopped everything. They gave in to the change. They put away all their tools and they took off the wheels from their carts and wagons. Then they took these wheels into their houses and decorated them with greens and lights and hung them up on the wall. Think about that! All the vehicles come to a dead stop and the walls are decorated with wheels and it was sign that they were living in a new period. They were trying to bring the sun god back, and from their perspective this little activity worked. Every morning the sun started to rise earlier and earlier and they knew that the sun had not abandoned them and life could go on.

So that’s how Christmas wreathes got their start. Christians transformed the tradition but there’s something pretty powerful in that symbolism. Gertrud Mueller Nelson says about this tradition, “Imagine what would happen if we were to understand that ancient prescription for this season literally and remove—just one—say the right front tire from our automobiles and use this for our Advent wreath. Indeed, things would stop. Our daily routines would come to a halt and we would have the leisure to incubate…Having to stay put, we would lose the opportunity to escape or deny our feelings or becomings because our cars could not bring us away to the circus in town.”

Hmm…that’s an interesting concept. Staying put we would be forced to come to grips with who we are and what we have become. Advent would not be a time for distraction by the bright lights in the city, but a time to look within ourselves and see where God is trying to get our attention. What would it mean to live in Advent time instead of on the timetable chosen for us by the world, a world that has taken our holiday and turned it into something we can barely recognize as Christian any longer? What other images might we have for this season? What if we decided that the circus in town, whatever that is for us, cannot tell us who we really are?

Well, let’s try some other images. What if Advent could be represented by a dirty cloth, a withered leaf and a potter’s wheel? Those are the images in today’s reading from Isaiah.
Isaiah is always in high demand during Advent. We will read a lot from him over the next month. In chapter 64 Isaiah was talking to a people who needed to get ready for God. The people of Israel were in exile, far from the land they loved. Isaiah prays for a day when God would return in a mighty, visible way with awesome signs that would shake the mountains and rattle the hills to prove that God was still there and still powerful enough to show their oppressors who the real, one, true, and holy God is. The images are of heavens ripped open and mountains quaking. God would come down like a blazing, destructive fire to prove to Israel’s adversaries that they should tremble in God’s presence. They might assume that Israel’s God was absent or powerless because of the condition of the Israelite people, but the day of the Lord was coming when all things would be made right. Things would be turned upside down because God would vindicate those who waited and expected a better day.

But then Isaiah’s tone changes. He seems to realize that if God comes, God is going to clean up everybody’s act and, even though that could mean the destruction of the empires of the world, it might also mean the destruction of the Israelites as well. Because when Isaiah started to look around at his own nation he saw a dirty cloth used up and stained by sin. God may not have been obvious, but the people were not faithful either. All of their pretensions to holiness amounted to little more than a filthy rag, hardly a fitting covering for God’s people.

Isaiah looked around at his people and saw a withered leaf, tossed to and fro by the wind. As the life drains out of leaves and they fall and blow in the wind, so the people, because of their sin, because of their failings, because of their forgetfulness, had lost the vitality they once had. They were no longer connected to the root of their life. No, the coming of God may be bad news for their oppressors but Israel was in no condition to feel smug either.

That’s when Isaiah starts to speak of another wheel, if only indirectly. He starts to talk about pottery and we can imagine a potter at work at a wheel. Have you ever seen a piece of clay being worked on a potter’s wheel? It’s a beautiful thing to watch. It is an earthy process that involves elemental things - a bit of clay and a bit of water worked by experienced hands. But there is no way to be a potter without getting your hands dirty. It’s an intimate affair.

That’s just the image Isaiah uses for God’s relationship with us. “We are all the work of your hand,” he says. “We are the clay and you are our potter. Yes, you have the power to crush us like a stubborn blob of clay, but don’t be angry with us. Don’t remember us for our failings and our forgetfulness. Remember us for being your people. Remember us because of your promised to be with us.”

The problem for us in our day is that we’re not too good at recognizing that we are clay. We’re not too good at expecting God in the midst of the circus. We’re too independent, too busy. We’ve got too many of our own wheels spinning.

It’s not that the things we’re doing are not noble causes. We want to provide for our families and so we work. We want our children and grandchildren to have opportunities to explore their gifts and so we take them to ball practice and music lessons and school clubs. I know that scene. We want to spend time with our friends. We want our holidays to be special and our gifts to be meaningful.

But if Christmas arrives more as an achievement than as a gift, I think we will have failed. If we will have spent these weeks of Advent in frantic preparation and neglected the state of our souls, we will not have accepted the gift this season is. We need brothers and sisters to hold us accountable. We need real introspection and real community. We need meals around the table with our families, with a wheel of lights in the center. We need something besides the circus.

So the church calendar changes at just this moment to give us that chance. Advent gives us the opportunity to recognize how differently the world can look when we’re living on God’s time. In the midst of the clamor and bustle and noise of the season, Advent speaks in a whisper.

This week our family watched the movie The Polar Express, which in some ways is just the sort of thing I complained about at the beginning of the sermon - a secular myth to replace the real Christmas story. But it had some very powerful moments. The Polar Express was a train that only some could hear and see. The sleigh bell that was given as a gift to the boy who was the main character rang with music that only some could hear…only those who believed. Christmas was not a guarantee of magic and mystery. It wasn’t even contained in the glitter and trappings. Christmas was a gift to those who believed.

In this season, we should know that God has plans for us. In this season as in all seasons, we should expect that Christ is coming, not just has come, but as the Communion liturgy says, Christ will come again. And when Christ comes again, how will be found and what will we be? God calls us to lay ourselves out before the mystery of this season and to prepare for the new work God will make of us.

It’s the season. A time of bright lights and pretty paper, of study lamps and shopping carts. But Isaiah the prophet ushers it in with talk of filthy rags and leaves blowing in the wind and lumps of clay before a waiting potter. And maybe that’s the real Advent mystery—that as much as we talk about waiting on God, its really God who is waiting on us. Thanks be to God.

Neither Sheep Nor Goat

Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV)
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'

“Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'

“And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

“Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'

“Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Ora Holland sent me a card recently. Ora is one of our members who has just recently moved out to Kansas to live near her son and his family there. She says that she misses us, just as we miss her, but she seems to be doing well in her new home and I know she was very happy that the place she is living accepted not only her but also her cat.

In her note Ora sent along this story that someone had sent her via the Internet: A Sunday school teacher wrote about getting to heaven. He said, “I asked the children in my class, ‘If I sold my house and my car, would that get me to heaven?’ ‘No!’ the children all answered.

“’If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard and kept it all neat and tidy, would that get me to heaven?’ Again the children answered ‘No!’

“’Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children and loved my wife, would that get me into heaven?’ I asked them again. Again they answered ‘No.’

“’Well, how can I get to heaven?’ A five year old boy shouted out, ‘You gotta be dead!’”

Actually I think that story is wrong. If there is one thing that Jesus taught us it is that heaven can and does invade earth and that we are not just waiting on the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is at hand and among us already.

But having said that there is also something very right about this story. The truth of the matter is that to know the kingdom in its fullness, our work must be done…at an end. But it doesn’t relieve our anxiety…it doesn’t quench our desire to know, “What is it that I must do?” We are like the young man who comes to Jesus, the lawyer who comes to Jesus, and the ruler who comes to Jesus and ask, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Yes, we know that it is belief in Christ, a personal relationship with Christ that overcomes our separation from God. Yes, we know that we are saved by grace. Yes, we know that there is nothing we can do to earn the love of God - that’s the point of unmerited love, you can’t merit it. But still we want to know. Still we must know, as people who are growing in holiness: What are we supposed to be doing in this time before the end of time? How do we live a life that is pleasing to God? Tell me, Jesus, because I just want to know, what do I have to do to be found worthy on the day of the Last Judgment? What do I have to do to get to heaven?

At first glance it would seem that we have an answer in the parable that Matthew gives us today. But I have to tell you something about Matthew. As we have been looking at the parables in this gospel for the last few months I have become more and more disturbed by them. They are not easy. I know that’s the point. Jesus says that’s the point. But they are more than difficult, they are…disturbing and more than a little dark.

You remember a few months ago when we heard the parable about forgiveness and it ended with the unforgiving slave being handed over to the extractors until his debt could be paid. That was disturbing. Or a few weeks ago when we talked about the parable of the wedding feast which ends up with someone arriving at the banquet improperly dressed and he gets thrown into the outer darkness with the wailing and gnashing of teeth business. That was distressing.

And today we have the parable of the sheep and the goats, which, on the face of it, seems to be the answer to our question: What do I have to do to get to heaven? Jesus tells us a story about what it will be like when he returns with the angels to judge all humanity at the end of history. Jesus will be seated on the throne and all the people of the world will be gathered before him and he will separate them just as a shepherd sorts out the sheep and the goats who have been mingled together in the herd.

Those on Jesus’ right hand will be the sheep and they are destined for glory. Why are they destined for glory? Because they saw Jesus when he was hungry and thirsty and a stranger and naked and sick and in prison and they responded to his need. They fed him, gave him drink, welcomed him, clothed him, healed him and visited him. They did what they were supposed to do and Jesus rewards them by welcoming them into the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world. The sheep didn’t know they were doing this for Jesus. They don’t even seem to have recognized him and they didn’t know that was what they were supposed to be doing. But Jesus says, “Whenever you did these things for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did them for me.” Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Jesus lives among the poor and needy. Jesus is the poor and needy. Do you see where this is headed?

As if to prove the negative, the parable goes on to talk about the goats. They didn’t respond to Jesus in his need and they are just as mystified as the sheep. They didn’t know they were not responding to Jesus. They didn’t know they were not doing these things for Jesus. But Jesus says, “Whenever you neglected any of the least of these, you neglected me.” And for this the result is exile from the kingdom and eternal punishment. This is where the dark and distressing side of the parable comes back in, but hearing it we think we get the point now. The standard for judgment is how well the people responded to the needs of the poor, the imprisoned, and the stranger. We think we know what it is that Jesus wants us to do now to get a good report on the day of judgment.

I have to say that this text has had quite a workout in the church in the last couple of centuries. The parable of the sheep and the goats was one of the prime texts of the social gospel movement which was very popular, especially among Methodists, in the early part of the twentieth century. The social gospel movement grew out of the spirit of optimism following the Civil War. Methodists and other Christians looked around at the world around them and they saw deep needs, but they also believed they could overcome them. For the followers of the Social Gospel movement the can-do spirit that built this country could be harnessed to meet the challenges of industrialization and the resulting urban poverty. God was calling us to help build the kingdom and this was America where every day and every way we’re getting better and better. Some of that optimism wore off when the First World War came around and it was obvious that progress didn’t mean the end of war and other evils, but the spirit of that movement survived.

This parable was a great text for the Social Gospel. It called Christians to action to address the needs of the disadvantaged. Many Methodists had become middle class and this text pushed them to remember where they had come from and to work for reforms to the economic and political structures of the day. Lots of good has been done in the name of this parable. Schools, colleges, hospitals, missions, prison ministries, the Society of St. Andrew, Habitat for Humanity, food banks…many of these have found their inspiration in this story. Though we know that we are saved by faith in Jesus…saved through grace…we have tried to live that out by being sheep in the way this story describes it.

But…you knew there was going to be a ‘but’ didn’t you?…but what if this story is not about our judgment at all? We’ve been listening to this story, desperately hoping that it will tell us what we need to do...desperately hoping to have some clue about how to judge this life we live…hoping, hoping, hoping that we can be a sheep and not a goat.

But what if where we are is someplace different? What if we are the poor, the sick, the naked, the hungry, the prisoner, the stranger…the people to whom the sheep and the goats were supposed to be related?

I know, I know. It’s ridiculous. As twenty-first century Christians living in the wealthiest nation in the history of the earth and established in this fine facility with a wonderful missions program and a great heart for this community it only seems right that we should relate to the people in this story who look most like us - the people with the opportunity and the means to help those who were down on their luck and separated from the rest of the community. Hey, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a good message for us to hear if we relate to the sheep and the goats. Preachers love texts that can motivate people to action and anxiety over your eternal fate because of how you treat the poor? There are worse things for people to hear. Good, faithful, loving things will happen when we hear the text this way.

But let me tell you why we may need to hear it a different way. I believe that Jesus did want for his followers to be attentive to the way they lived in the time after he was gone. He did want them to live in expectation, knowing that the kingdom was already at hand and yet ‘not yet.’ His parables about being watchful and awake were meant for a community that was always living on the edge - never comfortable with the way things are and always looking for the consummation of all things when everything would be made new. That’s why he talked about bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom’s return and servants given talents to used wisely during the time when the master was away.

But he starts this parable by talking of a judgment that would come to all the nations. All the nations - ta ethne. It sounds pretty universal to us as if to say that, of course, all people would be judged - no one excluded. But Jesus’ audience of Jews would have heard a distinction in the use of that word - ta ethne. The nations were those who were not a part of God’s realm, those who had not lived as God’s people. The nations - the goyim, in Hebrew - were those who had to be grafted on to Israel’s covenant. The nations were those waiting to be brought in. The first thing Jesus’ hearers would have thought when Jesus started to tell a story about the judgment of the nations was, “Oh, this will tell us how God will judge the rest of the world. This tells us the standards by which they become sheep or goats.”

Suddenly it’s a very different story that doesn’t answer the question we wanted answered. Now this parable is a story of how the nations were to treat the followers of Jesus. Would they be able to see Jesus in the poor, destitute, homeless bands that gathered together in Jesus’ name? Would they be able to know Christ in the faces of his family? Or would they continue to reject the Christians as they had rejected Jesus? Would they still find themselves separated from God and exiled to their despair? What was it going to be for these nations among whom the Christians would now live?

Jesus warned his disciples about what was about to happen. Even as he was sending them out two by two to proclaim the news of the kingdom he told them, “Look, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of those you meet because they won’t understand and they will hand you over to the Gentiles, the ethne, and will have you beaten, flogged and persecuted.” [Mt. 10:16-18] Jesus knew the church, when it was being the church, would always run into opposition. Those new Christians did not have pews and stained glass. They didn’t have the security of knowing they could speak and worship freely. They didn’t have much of anything really. But what they did have was Christ and that was all they needed.

No, this passage is not much help in asking the question we started with this morning. If we want to know what it is that we must do, we might do better to go back to those instructions Jesus gave to the disciples as he sent them out. What was it that the pairs of disciples were supposed to do? They were to go from town to town with a simple message - “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” They were to cure the sick, raise the dead(!), cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. They were to take no money and accept no payment. They were to speak blessing and peace to the places they went and to accept the hospitality that was offered them. And if their message was not accepted, they were to move on.

They were a restless lot, these early Christians. But they loved each other and they loved the nations, the people they were to meet. And when Jesus left the disciples to ascend to heaven after his resurrection, he sent them back to the nations. “Go, make disciples of all nations,” Jesus said, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” [Mt. 28:19].

That’s what Christians are supposed to be doing - not just doing good but being good. Not saving the world, because that’s what God’s doing. Not solely giving themselves to great social works, but recognizing that they give themselves to these works for a purpose, which is: to say to a dying world that the kingdom of heaven has come near and nothing is ever the same again because of that.

If the nations are to be judged on the basis of whether or not they responded to the presence of Christ in the world, then that implies that there are a people who intentionally seek to be Christ in the world. It does not imply that these people who seek to be Christ are better than the rest of the world, because clearly they are just as needy of salvation as any other person. It does not imply that these people who seek to be Christ are more privileged than the rest of the world, because clearly the situation of people who try to live out the gospel message can be rather desperate. But this story does imply that there are such people in this world which tilts so often to hopelessness and despair.

And here we are. Is this what we bargained for? Are we seeking to be Christ in the world? That’s a little bit more than W.W.J.D. We’re not just trying to ask what Jesus would do but to be Christ’s representatives in the world…to be people in whom others can see a story that will lift them out of bondage to sin and death. When you think of it this way, we don’t have to have anxiety over the exile to eternal punishment - the goat’s option is not a real option for the people who have come into a saving knowledge of Christ. The larger, scarier, tremendous question is: Is Christ seen in me in such a way that others can find their way out of goat-hood? Can I be open enough to the world around me that others can find a way to Christ?

So it all comes down to this. You don’t have to worry about being a sheep when you feel like a goat. It’s not about being a sheep or a goat. What it’s about is being Jesus. And here we are.

Here we are and I have nothing more powerful to say to you than that Christ is present with us now - ready to make us holy, ready to make us disciples so that we can make disciples of the nations. Can you believe it? We’ve got an awesome job. It’s the greatest job in the universe. Thanks be to God, who loves us enough to call us children of God and brothers of Christ. Thanks be to God.

A Monster Story

Judges 4:1-7
Once again the Israelites were doing what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh when Ehud died. So Yahweh sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan, who ruled in Hazor. His war-chief was Sisera, whose base was Harosheth-ha-goim. The Israelites cried out to Yahweh because Sisera had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the Israelites violently for twenty years.

Now Deborah, a fiery woman, was a prophetess, and she led Israel at that time. She used to sit under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim and the Israelites would come to her for justice.

Now she sent and called for Barak, son of Abinoam, from Kedesh of Naphtali. She said to him, “Hasn’t Yahweh, the God of Israel, commanded you: ‘Go and march to Mount Tabor. Take with you 10,000 men from Naphtali and Zebulun. And up the torrent of Kishon I will lead up to you Sisera, war-chief of Jabin, along with his chariots and his army and will give him into your hand’?”

“Tell us a story,” the children cried. “Yes, tell us a story,” they said to the wise old storyteller of the circle.

In the flickering glow of the fading campfire the faces of the children glowed as the light shone on their smooth, rounded cheeks. But on the wise old woman whose story they sought, the light found the folds in her skin, throwing shadows across her face. There was an air of wisdom and mystery about her. Only her eyes shone with full force.

There was a chill in the autumn air and the listeners sat in that familiar discomfort of campfires with their fronts fried and their backsides frozen. Some had blankets thrown around their shoulders. Others huddled together. But the storyteller sat still – undisturbed by fire or frost.

“Tell us a scary story,” one child said.

“Yes, yes! A scary story,” the others agreed. It was the time of night to tell such stories. Under the stars, in the darkness of the forest, among a circle of friends, it was time to tell a story of darkness and the light that overcomes it.

“Are you sure that you want to hear a scary story?” the old woman asked.

“Oh, yes! A monster story!”

“Well, in that case, listen well. For this is a story that may disturb you. It is a monster story from the Bible.”

“The Bible?!” a child cried. “We want to hear a scary story! Bible stories are all about sheep and arks and rainbows!”

“Oh, no, child. Some of the scariest stories of all come from the Bible because God knows we face some scary things in this world. Let me tell you a story of a judge named Deborah.”

“A woman judge? You mean like Ruth Bader Ginsberg?”

“No, this story happened a long time ago – way back in the time before Israel had a king. Before Jesus, before David, before Samson. It was a time when judges didn’t have black robes or gavels. Judges were leaders of their people, raised up by God to do mighty things. Deborah was just such a judge and yet also a prophet.”

“Hold on,” a little boy said. “A woman prophet?”

“It is true that this was a rare thing. Most women were never allowed to speak in public places in those days. Most of them wouldn’t have been respected as leaders. But God doesn’t always obey our rules and God chose Deborah to be a prophet.

“Deborah used to sit beneath a tree in the hill country of Israel. In fact it came to be known as her tree – the Palm of Deborah. People would come to Deborah for justice and to listen with her for God’s voice. She was a wise woman, a strong woman, and a fair woman. People who had disputes would bring them to Deborah because they knew she would hear them with the ears of God.”

“Wait a minute,” a little girl cried. “You said there was a monster in this story!”

“Oh, there is little one. I’m about to come to that. You see at this time the Israelite people were being oppressed by a foreign king – King Jabin of Canaan. King Jabin had an army commander who was fearsome enough to inspire terror in the heart of the bravest person. The Jewish legends say that he was a giant of a man. It is said that he could freeze a lion in its tracks just by screaming at it. He could destroy the walls of an enemy’s city with a shout – just like the Israelites had done at Jericho. When he went swimming the fish that would get caught in his beard would feed an entire family. He had 900 iron chariots and the Israelites had none. It is said that it took 900 fire-breathing horses to pull those chariots.

“Oh, he was terrifying alright. And his name sounded like something being spoken by a thousand snakes – Sisera. Sisera. Sisera. You can just feel the slimy, sinister-ness in his name. Sisera!

“For twenty years he had oppressed the Israelites – twenty long years. Until that day that Deborah called upon Barak.

“Now Barak was an Israelite who had some military experience and who feared God, but he was a little too fearful. God can sometimes speak in a still, small voice but even when God spoke very loudly to Barak he convinced himself that it was just the wind. So, even though God had been calling Barak for some time to go and face Sisera, he refused to hear it.

“Deborah called Barak to her palm tree and told him in words he could not ignore – ‘Barak, isn’t God calling you to march to Mount Tabor with 10,000 warriors. God will bring you Sisera and his chariots and his army to that place and will give you the victory.’

“But Barak was still afraid. On his own he knew that he would never have the courage to face Sisera and his 900 chariots of iron. Even if had 10,000 warriors he knew he couldn’t do it. He needed someone with unshakeable faith and a solid belief that it could be done. He needed someone like Deborah. So he said to her, ‘If you will go with me, I will go; if you won’t go with me, then I won’t go.’

“Deborah did go but before she did she told Barak that he wouldn’t get any of the glory from the battle because Sisera would die at the hands of a woman.”

A boy said, “So Deborah got to defeat him?”

“Ah, wait and see,” said the storyteller with a slight smile. “Now Sisera heard that the Israelites were gathering to oppose him on Mount Tabor. So he gathered his men and his 900 chariots of iron with their fire-breathing horses and headed for the Wadi Kishon – a normally dry valley at the base of the mountain.

“Sisera sent spies into the camp of the Israelites and they came back with wild reports. A good-sized army had formed and it seemed to have two generals – and one of them was a woman. The rumor in the camp was that Sisera would die at the hands of a woman.

“Well, Sisera thought this was funny. Hilarious, in fact. He threw back his head and laughed in his voice that could break down walls and freeze lions. The valley rumbled as if from thunderclaps as he laughed and cried out, ‘A woman? The Israelite god would defeat me, the mightiest general in the world, at the hands of a woman?’

“The Israelites on the mountainside trembled as the valley shook from Sisera’s laughter. Night fell and down below they could see the light of enemy campfires twinkling in the Wadi Kishon. But by those campfires the men of Sisera’s army had reason to tremble as well. They had heard stories. Stories about how the Israelite god had defeated the Egyptian pharaoh who came out with chariots against them. Stories about how God used unlikely people to win great victories. And though they feared Sisera, they feared the coming day as well.

“As daybreak grew closer black clouds rolled in and shut out the light from the stars above. At dawn the clouds opened and rain began to fall on the armies below.

“Sisera awoke in a foul mood. He was ready to destroy the Israelites. He despised them of their insult to him in sending an army led by a woman. So he ordered the men into their chariots and yelled, ‘Charge!’ in a voice that once again shook the earth. The 900 chariots led by fire-breathing horses rumbled forward to meet the army on the mountain above.

“On the mountain above there was a command to charge as well, this time in a woman’s voice. Deborah told Barak to move forward because God was with them on this day. The people had forgotten God. They had fallen away from what God meant them to be. But God heard their cries of oppression and was raising up a leader. The army of 10,000 moved to meet the dreaded general and the 900 chariots of iron.

“The rain continued to pour and soon the chariot drivers found themselves mired in the mud of the Wadi Kishon, which was quickly becoming a torrent. As the army of Sisera realized that they were becoming hopelessly stuck, the army of Israel suddenly thundered down upon them, catching them in their moment of weakness.

“There was panic, as there must have been so many years before for Pharaoh’s army as the Red Sea closed around them. Swords flashed in lightning blasts. Men cried out in agony. Horses fell into the mud.

“Mighty Sisera thought that he saw, on the hill above, a face – the face of a determined woman overseeing the chaos below. Deborah. God’s leader and prophet who knew that God was bringing about a victory. And Sisera fled. Mighty Sisera ran. He just jumped out of his chariot and ran as fast he could, fleeing from the Israelite god, fleeing from Deborah, fleeing from the sound of a battle in which all of his men were killed.”

“But wait,” a little girl said to the storyteller. “Deborah said that Sisera would be killed by a woman. Did she chase him?”

“No. She didn’t chase him.”

“Then how…”

“Well, Sisera ran until he came to a tent far from the battle. It was the tent of Jael.”

A little boy said, “Superman’s dad lived in the tent?”

“No, Jael was a woman. She was not an Israelite, but a Kenite. The Kenites were distantly related to the Israelites but Jael’s husband was in an alliance with the Canaanites so there was no reason that Sisera should have feared this tent, not that he had ever been afraid before.

“But he should have been because Jael lured him to her tent with seductive promises of security. And once he got into the tent Sisera began to feel a little safer. Even though his army had been destroy, he had eluded Barak and that woman whose presence meant him harm.

“In his ease he asked Jael for water but she, like a gracious hostess or a caring mother, gave him milk. He crawled beneath a rug to hide telling her to lie if anyone came asking if he were there.

“But when he had fallen asleep, Jael took a mallet and a tent stake and felt around beneath the rug for just the right spot. Then she drove the stake through Sisera’s skill, killing him instantly and pinning him to the ground.”

There was silence around the campfire for a minute then a little girl shrieked, “She was the woman!”

“Yes, she was the woman by whom Deborah’s prophecy was fulfilled.”

The little girl sighed, “So the monster was finally dead.”

“Oh, no. The monster is not dead. In fact, the monster is still very much alive.”

“But you said…”

“I said that Jael killed Sisera, but Sisera, fearsome as he was, was not the monster. When Deborah sang about the victory in later years she remembered that even Sisera had a mother who waited for him on that day. His mother stood at the window waiting to hear the hoof beats of those horses pulling the 900 iron chariots home in victory once again. But her son never returned and the hoof beats that she heard in the distance were those of Barak and his army coming to plunder her village.

“No, Sisera was not the monster, evil though he was. The real monster is the horror of violence that causes us to reach for swords and hammers and tent stakes, even in the name of good causes. When terrorists blow up hotels or wars leave people without homes or food…God weeps to see the violence we do to one another.”

There was another pause and then a child asked, “So what’s the point of the story? It is a scary story, but I don’t believe God wants us to treat anyone like that. Jesus said to love our enemies. What’s the moral of the story?”

“Well,” said the storyteller with a slight smile, “the moral could be ‘Beware of strangers in tents offering you stake for dinner.’ But more likely the story is about surprises. Deborah surprised Barak with God’s command. Jael surprised Sisera in her tent. And God surprised everybody by overthrowing the Canaanites and liberating the people. God used unlikely people – a woman prophet, a fearful man and even a foreigner with a tent stake to deliver the people of God.

“But there’s still that monster, isn’t there? The monster that stalks our streets and our homes and our relationships even today. There’s still that monster of violence and even though God sometimes to seems to work even through violent situations to bring about good, violence the monster haunts us. That’s why we still look to God. But you know the monster of violence can never have the last word. It didn’t have the last word on a hill called Calvary and it doesn’t have the last word tonight. The last word tonight is that you are loved, children.”

Finally one of the children said, “So, why does God give us scary stories again?”

“So that when the time is right and there is a chill in the air and you ask an old woman for a monster story, there’ll be something to tell.”

Glimpses of Glory: Seeing Through the Saints

1 John 3:1-3
Look at what sort of love the Father has given to us - that we should be called children of God and so we are. The world does not know us for this reason - it did not know him. Beloved, we are children of God now, and it is not yet revealed who we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him because we will see him just as he is. All who have this hope from him purify themselves just as he is pure.

November 1st is a forgotten day on most United Methodist calendars. All Saints Day is an ancient festival of the Church. It was John Wesley’s favorite feast of the Christian year. He lived in a time when Christmas celebrations were very small. Most people didn’t even take off work on Christmas in the 18th century. But All Saints Day was his favorite high holy day.

We’re only just beginning to reclaim this day as Methodists. We’re only just beginning to rediscover how important it is to remember and to celebrate the saints. All Saints Day is a time for us to remember that God has set us apart, has called us to a life more holy, has invited us to see ourselves as blessed by God and challenged to live differently because we know that we are children of God. When Paul writes to the churches in his letters, he writes to the saints gathered in those places. If we are to be called saints, a holy people, then we at least ought to spend one Sunday a year talking about what it means to be saintly.

Now the first thing I need to say is what saints are not. Saints are not human beings who live on a different plane of existence. Saints are not people who live lives so removed from the day-to-day dramas and tragedies and sin of the everyday world that they don’t seem human. Saints are not above it all, they are in it all. They are people like you and me and, bless us, when it comes to talking about the church the saints ARE you and me. Saints are made of very ordinary stuff.

It’s tempting on a day like today to talk only about those people who rose above it all. Like Rosa Parks or Mother Teresa…these are people who have become so legendary – so much like figures in stained-glass – that all the grit has been washed away from their stories. Rosa Parks will always be the woman who knew that she was a child of God and who would not relinquish that truth by giving up her seat. Rosa Parks is always on the bus in our minds and that’s a good thing, but we don’t see the struggle. Mother Teresa is always the smiling woman walking among the poor in India.

But I’ve known some saints who weren’t so loveable. Like Jack. Jack was one of the first people I met on my first Sunday at Memorial Church in Dallas. He was a retired worker from Braniff Airlines and I was a young seminary student and we ended up spending the better part of four years together sitting in the bass section of the choir.

Jack is a dead ringer for Richard Nixon, something he was not too proud of it but something that he couldn’t do much about. He could be a crotchety guy with a bad attitude. I’ll never forget when he stood up at a church board meeting in the middle of a discussion about how the church was going to reach out to the neighborhood around it. Memorial Church was a mostly Anglo church in a neighborhood that was very quickly becoming predominantly Latino. East Dallas was changing and the church was slowly dying. If they didn’t reach out they would surely go under. But Jack stood up and said, “Why are we talking about reaching out? Those people will not come to this church.” He could be crotchety and even a little racist.

But I liked sitting next to Jack in the choir. He had a corny sense of humor, which I’m prone to myself from time to time. Somehow Jack decided that he needed to take me under his wing and he did that by taking me fishing.

Fishing for Jack was a major affair. A major overnight affair. The first time we went fishing Jack said, “I’ll pick you up at 9 PM.”

I said, “Don’t you mean 9 AM?”

“No, that’s what time we’ll get back.”

And sure enough he rolled around with his boat to pick me up at 9 o’clock at night and we started out for Cedar Creek Lake, about 75 miles away. I realized quickly that this was a ritual for Jack. He stopped at the same store and got the same snacks and used the same bait in the same spots for the same length of time every time. The one concession he made to me being there was that he said he was going to let me pick the kind of fried chicken. “Do you want Popeye’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken?”

I said, “I don’t know. Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

He showed up with Popeye’s. He just couldn’t bring himself to change. And I appreciated that about him. I enjoyed fishing with him that night, even though we spent three hours of it holed up under a highway overpass bridge during a summer thunderstorm. He couldn’t even bring himself to get out of the water then. Jack and I didn’t agree on a lot of things, but even if he couldn’t bring himself to reach out to the community he lived in, he was reaching out to me.

Now Jack makes a pretty unlikely saint if we’re talking about stained-glass standards here, but let me tell you about another unlikely saint who makes his story more interesting. My third year of seminary in Dallas I left Memorial Church to start an internship with a community center and as the associate pastor of a Latino church in West Dallas. At the church I got to know Joel. I’ve known a lot of Joels in my life, and the one I love the best gets his name, in part from this Joel, another very unlikely saint.

Joel was my senior pastor at the Latino church. He was a feisty, combative pastor who was always getting himself in trouble. He was possessed by visions of where God was leading the church and when others questioned his vision he could launch into a fury. I spent most of my two years with him watching the fires that appeared in his wake as he roared ahead.

One Sunday I sat in the early morning Spanish service at the church and listened as Joel castigated the Church Council over some dispute they were having at the time. My Spanish was not very good then but I caught enough to know that he was calling people out by name in the sermon and telling them what he thought of their opposition. As the service ended I knew we had one more service to go – the English service – and I had to step in so I went up to him and said, “Joel, I think you’re in danger of losing your soul.” I think he did tone it down just a bit for that next service. Joel was impetuous and he was making a rough path toward sainthood, though martyrdom often seemed like a distinct possibility.

But let me tell you how Joel and Jack met. The vision that possessed Joel more than any other was that his congregation should merge with another congregation. The Latino church had a good-sized congregation with a lot of professionals in the Dallas community. But it was meeting in a building that should have been condemned. It was infested with rats and was falling apart. Joel had a vision that this vibrant congregation should join another congregation with a better facility and start a new ministry together with them. His vision led him to Memorial.

It seemed like a perfect plan in his mind. Memorial had a large, underused facility with an Anglo congregation that was finding it hard to reach out to their Latino neighbors. The Latino congregation could help them do that and could bring new life, vitality and resources. The fact that he might meet resistance on both sides never seemed to occur to Joel. This was what God was showing him and he could not understand why others couldn’t see it.

But his vision was from God. I realize now that it took someone with that ferocious determination and single-mindedness to get that merger to happen, and it did happen. That rough and tumble pastor who sometimes ruffled my feathers ended up inspiring me with what could happen. And even Jack was transformed.

One of the last things I did before leaving Dallas as a student was to go fishing one more time with Jack. The routine was the same. Peanut patties for snacks, Cedar Creek Lake, all night long, Popeye’s chicken. But this time there was a beautiful full moon shining over the lake and filling the sky. There was a nice breeze to cut the summer heat. And Jack talked about the new folks at his merged church who were becoming his friends. Sam, who now sat in the tenor section right in front of us. Richard, who sat with us in the bass section. I remembered how he had said that “those people” would never come. But they had and they had revived a dying church with a new vision of what they could be and they weren’t “those people” anymore. They were Sam and Richard and Conchita.

God did some absolutely amazing things with some pretty rough instruments in that place. God took people who not only lived on different sides of the city but on different planets culturally and made a family out of them. God took a brilliant, surly bulldog of a preacher named Joel and a crotchety, rigid man in need of transformation named Jack and put them in the same family. Those are the kind of saints I want you to hear about.

I want you to hear about Jack and Joel because I want you to know that it is not the best efforts of the best ones of us that makes a person a saint, it is Jesus Christ who makes a person a saint. It isn’t special breeding or special training that creates saints, it is Jesus Christ who creates saints. It isn’t vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that make a person a saint; it’s your baptism that makes you a saint.

1 John puts it very well. The writer is talking to a community that is at threat and under siege. There is darkness all around and they are in constant conflicts with powers they can only name as evil. It would be easy for them to forget who they were and why they were continuing in this life.

The writer of the letter tells them, “Look at the love that God has given us: We can be called children of God?! It’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. It’s fantastic. But it’s true. When we have been baptized into Christ, when we have put on Christ, when we have started to live through Jesus we ARE children of God now.

“But yet…but yet, it isn’t yet revealed who we shall be. It isn’t yet clear how God will take us, with all our foibles and frailties, with all of our doubts and dreams, with all of our wild hopes and great despair, with all of our sin and make of us saints…it isn’t clear who we shall be. But we know this: when Jesus is revealed in fullness at the end of time, we shall be like him because we shall see him just as he is.”

Saints are not holy because of what they have done…they are holy because they can see Jesus. They are holy because God has made them so. They are holy because God takes all of us who have passed through the waters of baptism and washed up on the shores of a new life and has set us on a new course, asking us to live out our calling as holy people. No, we don’t deserve that title. No, we didn’t earn that distinction. No, salvation is not ours by right. Salvation is ours by gift, by grace, by wholly uncalled-for mercy working in us before we could get ourselves together. We aren’t holy people, set apart people, saints for any good reason except God’s gracious love grabbing hold of us and refusing to let us go.

So when God takes hold of people like Jack and Joel, something miraculous can happen. These people seek Jesus in their own stumbling way and they meet in the unlikeliest of places – as brothers in a new church and with a new mission. Saints are people who know that they have been grafted onto a tree that was not their own. Saints are people who know that they are insufficient to the task at hand but who trust that God is sufficient. Saints are people who know their limits and fall at God’s feet.

I know you can think of some more saintly souls to remember today. There are people whose lives are so full of grace and wonder that we do set them apart in our minds and seek to model our lives after theirs. But there are other saints, perhaps more gritty and less attractive, who despite themselves show forth God’s love and God’s power to transform. I’ve been touched by quite a few of those saints along the way as well. I’ve met them in church meetings and in fishing boats. I’ve been exasperated by them and inspired by them. And if I am to be a saint it is for the same reason that I call them saints – God loves them so much that God calls them children of God. It’s not clear what we shall be, brothers and sisters, but this much is true – Jesus isn’t through with us yet.

May we be more holy and offer what we have and what we are to the God who meets us here, at this table, in the communion of the saints of every time and place. Thanks be to God.