R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Exodus 20:1-2 (NRSV)
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

Luke 1:5-20 (NRSV)
In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.

Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside.

Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

Zechariah said to the angel, "How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years."

The angel replied, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur."

The first step in dealing with a problem is admitting that you have a problem. We have a problem. It shows up in a number of places. You can see it on T.V. You can see it in our music. You can see it in our courts and prisons. But perhaps the place the problem is most visible is in our schools.

I know a number of you--adults, children, and youth--are in our schools on a daily basis. I am so grateful to be able to go to our schools and see people from this congregation who are contributing so much to making our schools better. We have a lot of students, teachers, staff people and support people that we can be proud of. But they know we have a problem, too. Our schools are in crisis and they are in crisis for the same reason that our youth are in crisis: The connection, the concern, the respect that should exist between adults and youth has been broken and we have not been successful in rebuilding it. So we have youth who live most of their adolescence without significant relationships with adults and adults who are mystified at what to do about their youth who seem to be living in a different culture and sometimes on a different planet.

So you see the fruits of this as you walk through our schools. Does it seem strange to you that we are having major meetings in this county over dress codes and the possibility of uniforms in our schools? I have to watch where I step with that issue because I have a very divided family on that. But the reason for the discussion is that dress standards are the tip of a very large iceberg. Bare midriffs and droopy drawers are only a sign of something much larger. When they are matched with consistently disorderly conduct and disruptive behavior and disrespect of teachers, we see that something much larger is going on. It’s clear that some students see no need to relate to adults and they see no value in respect.

So they act up and act out. Northampton High School reported 939 disciplinary incidents between September and December which works out to something like 14 a day. Teachers soldier on through the difficulties. They do the best can and they do amazing things in helping our students learn, in minimizing the disruptions, and in dealing with the attitudes and dress code violations and hallway fights. But they wonder where the backup is. And good young teachers leave. And the ones who stay feel sometimes that they are the only ones who stand between these children and youth and a world with no education, no discipline, and no order at all.

Now I know we’ve got good kids. Don’t hear me wrong. I love our youth and I love hanging out with them. They are bright and talented and God loves every one of them. They do amazing things. But our youth are hurting and they wonder where the backup is, too. Who’s going to give them a sense of hope and guidance in this wilderness they’re passing through? Where are the adults who will care about them enough to enter their world and to show them what it means to find meaning and purpose in life? Who will love them enough to confront them when they have gone astray? Who will teach them what it means to seek God and to become a whole person?

Now I’m going to date myself and talk about an old movie. Way back in the year of 1991 - back in the last millennium - there was a movie called Grand Canyon. It was not about the Grand Canyon, it was about Los Angeles and the ways that people’s lives were coming apart in that city.

In the opening scene of the movie a character played by Kevin Kline is leaving a Lakers basketball game and takes a wrong turn that leads him into a very dark and threatening area of the inner city where his car breaks down. This may be hard for you younger folks to believe, but this was in the days before On-star and cell phones and things. But there were things like car phones and that’s what this man uses to call for a tow truck.

But he’s scared. He knows that there are gangs of young men roaming the streets - gangs filled with fatherless young men who have a reputation for violence. Sure enough a group of thugs surround his car and begin to harass him. He begins to believe that he will die because one of the group pulls out a gun and threatens to do just that.

Just then the tow truck driver shows up. It’s an African-American man named Simon and he sees the situation but he goes about his business as if the boys weren’t there. He asks Kevin Kline’s character what has happened, determines he needs a tow and he hooks up the car to his truck while he invites the man to sit in the cab with him. All the while the gang of boys is threatening him and saying, “Are you dissin’ me?” Which is short for “Are you disrespecting me?”

Finally Simon stops and says to the leader of the gang, “I need to ask you a favor. Let me go my way here…I need to get out of here, and you got the gun.”

The gang leader grudgingly agrees to let him go but he says, “Tell me this: are you asking me as a sign of respect, or are you asking because I’ve got the gun?”

Simon says to him, “Man, the world ain’t supposed to work like this. I mean, maybe you don’t know that yet. I’m supposed to be able to do my job without having to ask you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything is supposed to be different than it is.”

But he still hasn’t given the young man the answer he’s looking for so he says to Simon, “So what’s your answer?”

Simon says, “You ain’t got the gun, we ain’t having this conversation.”

“That’s what I thought,” the boy says. “No gun, no respect. That’s why I always got the gun.”

To me that was a very insightful scene. It was even more profound a few months later when Los Angeles exploded in riots in the spring of ‘92. It showed that there was something tragically wrong in the way our children were being raised. They had no way of expressing themselves in ways that could be valued by the adults around them and they had no adults around them to show them a different way. So they sought a cheap version of respect with a gun. And Simon recognized the consequence. “Everything is supposed to be different than it is.” It seems just as true in 2006.

We may live in a society that has forgotten the value and role of its elders, but God knows, too, that everything is supposed to be different than it is. Right there in our Ten Commandments you see it. The first four deal with how we are to honor and serve God. The last five are strict prohibitions. But right in the center, the fifth commandment, is the hinge that connects the way we live with the way we honor God. “Honor your father and your mother,” the commandment says, “and you will live long in the land that God is giving you.” That word honor is a heavy word. Literally. It could also be translated as “Give weight to what your father and mother say. Don’t disregard what they say for it should weigh on you.”

What weight do we give to our parents today? And here I’m not just talking about our biological or adoptive parents, though I am talking about them, too. We may have really negative experiences with neglectful parents, or abusive parents, or absent parents. But that was no less true in Moses’ day when the Commandments were given. Parents can be wrong sometimes. They can be out of touch. They don’t know how to use remotes or to do instant messaging or set the clocks on DVD players. But God knew that the parents and beyond them the elders among the people had a special responsibility for passing along the teachings of the community, for raising their children in the ways of God. That’s why the Bible so often says about the law - teach these things to your children. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. [Deut. 6:7]. Elders need to talk to their children and children need to give them weight and honor and yes, respect. Respect is not a zero sum game. If I give it to someone else it doesn’t mean that I have less myself. Children need to hear the words of the elders because the only way they can become people of weight themselves is if they have an elder to guide them in the way.

Now already I can hear in my ears the music of Fiddler on the Roof, and not just because Judi is getting ready to start rehearsals this week. That show opens with all of the elders in the village shouting and singing about how their lives are grounded by tradition, tradition! Things have always been like they are and why is that, “Because of tradition!” That’s just the sort of thing that leads to youthful rebellion which is what happens throughout the rest of the show. It was a perfect Broadway show for the 60s when the whole culture was asking questions about the old ways and questioning whether the tradition really knew what it was talking about.

I hear that and I know we asked some important questions of the old authority structure. We all want to “stick it to the man.” But now we have no man to stick it to. It’s like that commercial that shows the corporate executive in his fancy office talking about how a consumer choice he made was his little way of sticking it to the man until his aide reminds him that he is the man. No one wants to be an authority figure in this new age, but God needs elders. I know that’s an archaic word and it’s something that no one wants to claim to be in our youth-obsessed culture. But God needs people who will speak the truth in love to our youth and God needs youth who will listen for the truth from their parents and elders even when they can see how many ways their elders have gone wrong.

So then there’s the story from Luke where the angel comes to the old priest Zechariah who has been a faithful servant of God for many years along with his wife, Elizabeth. What they have desired more than anything else is a child, though by now they are far past child-bearing age. But they are among God’s people and we know from the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hagar, and Naomi, just to name a few, that God has a way of bringing about unexpected pregnancies. That’s just what this angel announces to Zechariah, though he doesn’t believe it and as a result he’s struck mute until the child is born.

But what is interesting is what the angel tells Zechariah about this child to be born. He will grow up to be John the Baptist, of course, who is the forerunner of Jesus. But he will fulfill a prophecy of Malachi, which said “He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.” [Mal. 4:6]

One of the things that had gone wrong in the land, one of the reasons that the people were crying out to God for a redeemer and a Messiah, was that parents and children were estranged from each other. The old systems that had provided for the passing on of God’s word from one generation to another were breaking down. But even worse, the hearts of parents and the hearts of children were turned elsewhere. The sign of the coming kingdom was that their hearts would be turned to one another once again so that there would be no curse on the land.

Those Christians who followed on the message of John and Jesus lived out this prophecy in a radical new way. They knew that the raising of children into new Christians was too important to be left to individual family units. They knew that it took, if not a village, a body to raise a child - the body of Christ. So when they welcomed a person into the church, they made it clear that they were now adopted into a new family. When Jesus looked around at those he was teaching and said, “Who is my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and brothers - whoever does the will of God”…when Jesus said this he was not saying that his family didn’t matter but that he had a larger family and so do all of us when we enter this community.

That’s why this message is so important for us. Our youth are hurting. Our schools are facing a crisis. And what group is more able to speak a word to this situation than a body that has declared that because of Jesus Christ we no longer look like the rest of the world? Who but the Church, which connects people who would not be connected otherwise, which brings into relation people who would not otherwise be related, which says that to enter the kingdom of God you must become like a child, and which challenges adults to be more than friends to their children but elders who share the word of God despite their failings…who but the Church can speak a word about why honor and respect are essential things?

I am so excited about what is going on in Franktown Church. Every day I experience something that just knocks my socks off. People are finding healing. People are finding grace. And what excites me more than anything are the possibilities for drawing people together around the love of God. But we need to live out this vision of Zechariah’s angel. We need to see the hearts of parents turned to children and the hearts of children to their parents.

How does that happen? It happens when we get together with Angie Williams after the service today to talk about how adults can become more involved in the lives of our youth. It happens in our confirmation process when adult mentors get together with young people, one on one, and share their lives and their questions and their faith with one another. It happens when we pray for our youth and for our elders. It happens in informal ways when adults stop to talk with youth about what is going on in their lives and when youth do the same with adults. Yes, it’s awkward and unnatural - but only because we have lived so long in a world where “everything is supposed to be different than it is.”

Most of all it happens in baptism as we remind ourselves of the implications of God’s love. When we baptize an infant or a child or even an adult in this font, we recognize that something has shifted radically. It’s so radical that Paul uses the language of death and resurrection to talk about the experience of passing through that water. We die to our old lives and are raised to life with Christ in a new relationship with God and with others. We are adopted through this water. We are reborn. And we have a new family when we do it.

Whenever we baptize someone we repeat an affirmation together as a congregation which says that we have claimed someone as our own and that we promise to help that person live out the claim God has on their lives. We say, “Wesley, you are God’s child and you are our child.” “Maxine, we love you because God loves you and we want to help you be the best disciple you can be.” “Tad, you are gifted and loved beyond measure and we’re going to hold one another accountable to that love and those gifts.” That’s what happens at baptism.

So I want to ask you to do something. I want to ask all the adults in the congregation to stand if you are able. Children and youth of Franktown Church - these are your parents. You don’t just have those at home. You’ve got all of these people who claim you and love you and if you were baptized, they said that they would help to raise you. Yes, they make mistakes but they also have the capacity to learn from their mistakes. Talk to them. Listen to them. Honor them. You need them.

Now it’s time for the rest of you to stand. If you are 18 or under, stand up. Adults, these are your kids. They are all your kids. Like every child ever born, we had no idea what they would become or what they would do, but we knew from the first moment that they were a gift. If they were baptized here, you claimed them. They need you and your guidance. They need as many caring adults in their lives as they can get because it‘s a rough world out there. And you need them.

It’s an amazing thing that God has done. God has taken all of us and made us a family. What was God thinking? I really don’t know. I think God was thinking that Christ’s love is sufficient to transform the world. And us too. Thanks be to God.

Contemplating Demons

Mark 1:21-28
They went into Capernaum and when the Sabbath came he entered the synagogue and taught. They were amazed at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.

Just then there was, in the synagogue, a man with an unclean spirit and he cried out, "What is there between us and you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!"

But Jesus warned him saying, "Shut up and come out from him!"

The unclean spirit convulsed him and crying with a loud voice came out from him. Everyone was astounded so that they asked one another, "What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands unclean spirits and they listen to him!"

At once a report about him went out in every part of the region around Galilee.

I’ve got a confession to make this morning. It has taken me some time to come to this conclusion about myself, but it just can’t be ignored any more. My wife and children have known this about me for some time, but I need to come clean with you, too. I am…a theology nerd.

I’m telling you now, because the truth was going to get out. The other night I was found out by Bruce and Rebecca Jones as they came around to check that the building was locked for the evening. It was ten o’clock and the Staff-Parish Relations Committee members had left over an hour before. But I rushed back to my office because I knew I had a package waiting for me. On my desk was a box with a new book – a theology book. I tore into it like a kid (or an adult) with the latest Harry Potter book. A theology book! Filled with big fifty dollar, multisyllable words like theodicy and eschatology. For an hour solid I read and devoured this book until a flashlight shined in the office window. It was the lock-up crew and they caught me red-handed.

Now I sound like I’m ashamed of this, but I’m not. It’s not a bad thing to be a theology nerd. I think everyone ought to be a theology nerd, because even though they have forgotten how to speak normal English, theologians help us think through what it is that God is doing with us and with the world. Good theology helps us express our faith in God more clearly and coherently. Good theology trains our minds toward God and develops our love so that we can love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind [Luke 10:27]. Good theology may make you prone to overusing fifty-dollar words but when it is joined to a vital, living faith, theology can be a means of grace, making God incarnate in language – the Word revealed in words! You can tell I used to be a Ph.D. student in philosophical theology, can’t you?

Well, I tell you this because it may help you understand why it is that I have been thinking about demons this week. I have enough self-awareness to know that not everyone has been thinking about demons this week. With Pittsburgh playing Denver today…with SOL tests coming up at school…who’s thinking about demons? With basketball games and work to do…who’s thinking about demons? With the General Assembly talking about transportation and taxes and the Congress melting down in scandal and corruption…O.K., maybe we have been thinking about demons. But even there – even in our political systems and in the midst of wars and rumors of wars, how often do we use demons as anything more than a metaphor for what is wrong with the world? We are modern people…postmodern even! What have demons to do with us anymore?

But I have been thinking about them. And to look at our popular movies it seems I’m not the only one. Films like The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Constantine imagine worlds in which demons have a real influence on what happens in the here and now. Why are we so fascinated with demons?

Now I know what good theology says. Good theology knows that God is the ruler of all that is. Good theology knows that the battle is over, the victory won. Good theology says with Paul, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting?" [1 Co. 15:55]. Jesus has dealt the final blow to evil and all of its denizens. The cross stands empty to the sky. The tomb lies open and vacant. We can’t imagine that evil or the devil or the demons have any force or any reality or any power to change what God has done and what God is doing in the world. God is on the march and we know the end of this story, don’t we? The kingdom of heaven…now that’s good theology!

So what to do with demons? Laugh at them because they persist in the ridiculous notion that they can resist God’s will. Pity them because they have forgotten that they are made to praise God. Don’t show them any interest because they don’t deserve it. That’s good theology, too. When we know the good news of Jesus Christ, the forces of darkness don’t deserve our fascination.

But I have been thinking about them because as a modern person, who can explain the world and how it works without once mentioning demons, I want to know why that is. As a pastor who sees people struggling with deep fears and powerful forces, I think about demons because it seems a proper name to give to those struggles. As a believer who celebrates the resurrection but who knows that death still comes, I wonder about the persistence of evil. As a theology nerd, I think about demons because even they have something to tell me about this holy and powerful God who is reconciling all things to God’s own self.

Of course, another reason I’m thinking about demons this week is because of the passage that we just read from the gospels. There are demons in this story – or at least unclean spirits – and Jesus confronts them directly. He is not embarrassed to call them out. And when he does, the people…well, listen to what happens here:

It is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. As Mark tells the story in the first twenty verses of the first chapter, Jesus has been baptized by John in the Jordan, gone out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, returned to his home and begun a public ministry proclaiming repentance and good news, and gathered a group of fishermen as disciples. He’s been busy. Now he heads to the synagogue on a Sabbath and begins to teach and people are amazed at his teaching. He not only knows what he is talking about, but he has an air of authority about him. He is certainly not like the scribes, the teachers they are used to hearing.

But in the midst of teaching a man cries out. The Bible says he was a man with an unclean spirit and he recognizes Jesus’ authority, too, but unlike the rest of the people there in the synagogue he knows where it comes from and perhaps for the first time he knows what it means for him. "What is there between us and you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!"

Now that’s an interesting thing to say. "Jesus of Nazareth," the man calls him. But that’s not a very descriptive title. Jesus was not an uncommon name and Nazareth was a very common place. But even so the man – or the unclean spirit within him – knows that Jesus has the power to destroy. Jesus is the Holy One of God. God had said as much when Jesus was baptized. The voice came from the sky and spoke it out. But now the demons are saying it, too. Despite themselves they give witness to God. But what is there between God and the demons? The man doesn’t answer but we can fill it in for him – nothing. There is nothing between God and the demons and in the face of God, the demons must be gone.

So Jesus says, "That’s it. Be quiet and be gone." The unclean spirit gives one last cry and convulses the man, but it’s over very quickly. Now the people see that something new has entered the world – a new teaching that is not afraid to confront unclean spirits and evil and to expose them for what they are. And in the name of Jesus, all the demons will lose. From here on out, Jesus will be followed by people with leprosy, friends carrying a paralyzed man, and all sorts of folks in need of healing. And he will heal them.

It’s a very disturbing thing for us modern folks to read. We don’t know what to make of miraculous healings and wandering unclean spirits. It doesn’t fit our worldview. But then there is a lot that disturbs us, isn’t there?

With our wealth and our technology and our belief in progress, Americans have come to believe that we have conquered those things that have plagued us for so long. We have miracle drugs, but now we see drug-resistant diseases. We have a powerful economy, the strongest in the world, but when there is trouble in a far-off Nigerian oilfield it trembles. We have strength and security, but we know, after 9-11, how easily that is threatened. We have levees and forecasts and satellite imaging but the waves and the winds still blow where they will. We have seismographs, but they can’t stop the tsunamis they record.

So it’s not making sense. When bad things happen, they don’t make sense. And we think God should be doing something about it. Or at our worst moments we may think that God is actually behind it all, sending us bad things, maybe because we deserve it or maybe because God wants to teach us lesson. You’ve heard a variation on that theme from folks like Pat Robertson and the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, in the last few weeks. But I don’t believe that.

Actually, I think this is where it’s better to talk about demons or to talk about what evil does. God doesn’t want evil in the world. God comes to overcome the evil of the world. God doesn’t desire the suffering of a child or the devastation of a hurricane. God, in Jesus, welcomed and healed children and said to the waves, "Peace, be still." God doesn’t actively plan catastrophic events to teach us a lesson. God plans the new heaven and new earth where every tear will be wiped away and death and mourning will be no more. That’s the lesson we need to hear.

So what’s going on? Though God does not intend evil, there is a force that resists the reconciling movement of God. It has no ultimate power. It cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is a rearguard action as the world conforms to the shape of the coming kingdom. But as people living in the here and now, only glimpsing what is to come, it can still cause us pain.

It makes sense to talk about demons because we know that there is pain in our families and in our relationships that God doesn’t want and that God rejects. It makes sense to talk about evil because we know that we have loved ones in grip of things they can’t control, whether it be gambling or alcohol or drugs, and they need to be released. It makes sense to talk about the forces of darkness because even the natural world sometimes presents us with tragedies so big and so grand that we can’t reconcile them with a reconciling God who is making all things news. It makes sense to talk about demons because when we face cancer or heart disease or diabetes, even though we know we have scientific explanations for them, we also know that they are conditions that cry out for a savior who can cast them out.

The book I was reading that night in the office was a new one written by one of my former classmates in the theology program at UVA. David Bentley Hart is just flat brilliant and I hated being in class with him because he was the sort of student who would intimidate everyone else in the room into silence, including the professors. And it was totally unselfconscious – he was just being who he was – naturally brilliant. But after the tsunami last year he wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal that they asked him to turn into a book, which he did. It’s called The Gates of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?.

Hart is prone to those fifty-dollar words, but the argument he makes is just right to me. We don’t have to give up believing that God is making all things new just because we experience disaster and destruction. This is a broken, fallen world and the brokenness extends to time and nature. But we know that ours is a God who knows something about being broken. Jesus was broken on a cross to redeem this evil age and to overcome all that opposes God. God has never stopped loving this world and reaching out to us and redeeming this broken time. Where was God in the tsunami? Where God always is – drawing the world towards the future God intends for it and casting out the demons who would tell us otherwise.

So, yes, we should laugh at the demons and pity them and deny them the power they would have over us. But we should not let them pass without our rebuke. I don’t know what demons you’re facing today, but they don’t deserve to be there. You know what it’s like to live with them and you know how difficult it is to let them go. Sometimes we feel like we are possessed by the problems and the evils we face. God has come to cast them out. Jesus is capable and the Spirit is sufficient to release us from their power. What has God to do with evil in this world? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. God casts it out. What has God to with us in this world? Everything. Absolutely everything.

Whatever you have done, wherever you have been, whatever you are facing, whatever you are letting go, whomever you are and whomever you have been…it really doesn’t matter because the Lord of the Universe has come to town to look us straight in the eye – to see the things in us which would oppose God’s love – and to say to those things "Come out" and to say to us "Today, salvation has come to you and your house." Are you ready for the good news that casts out darkness? ‘Cause whether you use fifty-dollar worlds or not, God is doing it. And that’s good theology. Thanks be to God.

Name-Calling

1 Samuel 3:1-20
Young Samuel served YHWH under Eli. Now the word of YHWH was like a rare jewel in those days; prophecy was not widespread.

One day Eli had gone to lie down in his usual place. His eyes were beginning to fail and he could not see. The lamp of Elohim had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down in the temple of YHWH where the ark of Elohim was. Then YHWH called to Samuel and he said, "I'm coming." He ran to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."

But Eli said, "I didn't call you. Go back and lie down." So he went and lay down.

Again YHWH called, "Samuel!"

Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."

He said, "I didn't call, my son, go back and lie down."

Now Samuel did not yet know YHWH and the word of YHWH had not yet been revealed to him. Again YHWH called Samuel a third time and he got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."

Then Eli understood that YHWH was calling the boy. Eli said to Samuel, "Go back and lie down. If he calls to you, say, 'Speak, YHWH, for your servant is listening.'"

So Samuel went back and lay down in his usual place. YHWH came and stood there and called as before, "Samuel, Samuel!"

Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."

Then YHWH said to Samuel, "Look, I am going to do a thing in Israel which will tingle both ears of all who hear of it. In that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I spoke concerning his house, from beginning to end. I declare to him that I will judge his house forever because he knew about the sin - that his sons committed sacrilege against God - and he did not rebuke them. So I swear concerning the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli will never be expiated by sacrifice or offering."

Samuel lay there until morning; and then he opened the doors of the house of YHWH. Samuel was afraid to report the vision to Eli, but Eli summoned Samuel and said, "Samuel, my son," and he answered, "Here." And Eli asked, "What did he say to you? Keep nothing from me. May God do thus and so and more to you if you keep from me a single word of all that God said to you!"

Samuel then told him everything, withholding nothing from him. And Eli said, "He is YHWH; he will do what he deems right."

Samuel grew up and YHWH was with him; YHWH did not leave any of his prophecies unfulfilled. All Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was trustworthy as a prophet of YHWH.

When I was about 4 years old I went shopping with my Mom at the old Miller and Rhoads department store in Charlottesville. I grew up in Orange, which was a small town, and for us Charlottesville was the big city and a multi-story department store was the height of fashionable shopping. It had the same magic for us as “across the bay” has here. At 4 years old it seemed like a great adventure and on this particular day it turned out to be just that.

I was following my mother dutifully through the racks of clothes that towered over me like the walls of a great polyester canyon. It was the 60s so I was looking at a lot of lime green and large orange flowers. At some point I needed to go to the bathroom and with all the confidence of 4 years of living I decided not to bother Mom, who was busy shopping, and instead I struck out on my own to find the bathroom.

I was pretty resourceful, too. I found the elevator, pushed the button for the correct floor. I found the bathroom…got back on the elevator…and I couldn’t remember which floor I had been on. I pushed a button that looked like it might be right but when I got off the elevator I was totally bewildered. Were these the right polyester slacks and mini-skirts? Had I been past these purple vinyl handbags before? Was my mother anywhere to be found?

I wandered aimlessly. Panic began to take hold. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. I had visions of becoming a Miller & Rhoads orphan—a ward of the state. Why, oh, why had I ever left on my own?

Then I heard it. In a very familiar voice I heard my name. The voice didn’t have a very happy tone but there it was, “Alex, Alex, where have you been?” Then I knew that I was found. Though I was in a very strange place, I was home.

You know, there is nothing more powerful in the Christian story than hearing your name called. Think of Saul on the road to Damascus, knocked off his donkey by a blinding light and hearing Jesus call his name, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul got up, dusted himself off, and went on to a new life with a new name as Paul.

Think of Mary in the garden by the empty tomb. Weeping inconsolably, distraught at the thought of Jesus’ body being stolen away, confronting a man she assumed to be a gardener and then hearing him call her name, “Mary.” Then she saw that the man before her was the one she sought all along – Jesus.

Or think of Samuel—the young boy in the temple in today’s reading. Samuel lived in desperate times. It was a time of chaos. A time of war. It was a time when all of the old ways of thinking and acting seemed to be falling apart. It was a time when there were no leaders - no guides to tell what was good and right. It was a time, as the book of Judges says, when every person did what was right in his or her own eyes. Come to think of it, it was a time not much different than our own.

Samuel’s story really begins before his birth in a town called Shiloh. Shiloh was in the hill country of Israel. It was a holy site where there was a temple to Yahweh, the God of Israel. It was a place where people would come for festivals - a place where people would come to offer sacrifices - a place where some horrible things had taken place - women abducted to be forced into marriage against their will, priests abusing their position and taking what was rightfully God's. But in this temple was the Ark of the Covenant - the ark that Israel had carried through the wilderness and through the Dead Sea - the ark that contained the Ten Commandments which God had given to Moses on Mount Sinai. It was a powerful symbol of God's presence, and so the people came.

But though the ark was easy to find, God was not. The Bible tells us that the voice of God was scarce in those days, like a precious jewel that is valued because it is so rare. And there were no prophets to convey God's word to the people - only the judges like Deborah and Samson who were raised up from time to time but who never really united all the people. It was, after all, a time when people did what was right in their own eyes.

The priest of the temple was a man named Eli who was beginning to get on in years. He was a tired man - a worldly man - who found himself serving a God who never spoke to him. And after all these years he had begun not even to expect to hear God speak to him. Maybe once he had desired such a thing - but now, well, now he was old and tired and there was the work of the temple to be done. Yahweh God was a duty for Eli - a name to be spoken and an image to uphold.

If Eli was world-weary, his sons were worse. Phinehas and Hophni, they were called. They served as priests as well, but their sins were many. It was the right of priests to come while a sacrifice of meat was being boiled and to dip a fork in to remove the meat to eat. It was a perk of the office and it was fine because it was the fat that God wanted - that was the heart of the offering - and that had boiled away. But Phinehas and Hophni demanded the meat before it was cooked, fat and all, and this was denying an offering to God. The people protested, but the two sons of Eli continued in their wicked ways and Yahweh God was not pleased.

But that was not all that they did. They began to demand abuse the women who served at the entrance of the temple. Finally the word came back to Eli. He called his sons in and scolded them, warning them of the consequences of their actions. "If a person sins against another person that's one thing," he said, "but if a person sins against God what kind of sacrifice could be made to intercede for that one?" But the sons would not listen to their father, and they continued in their ways.

Into this world where God spoke rarely, if at all, and where God's priests abused the very site of God's presence - into this scene came a child. Though Eli had lost the fervency and expectation of hearing God's voice, one woman sought it with all her heart. Her name was Hannah and one day she came to the temple during the annual festival to pray. She was the wife of a man who loved her, but who also married another woman, as the custom sometimes was. And, as happened all too often in Biblical days, one wife was able to have children and the other wasn't and a great deal of hostility brewed between the two. Hannah was the one who could have no children. And as she prayed in the temple that day she told God that if Yahweh would grant her a son she would give him back to the Lord for all the days of his life and a razor would never touch his head - a symbol of the vow she took for him.

Eli was sitting by the door to the temple that day and he saw Hannah's lips moving as she prayed. "Too much wine at the festival," he thought. He went over and said to her, "You're drunk aren't you? Straighten up!"

But then she told him about her prayer and old Eli was ashamed of himself. It was so rare that he saw true fervency that he mistook her for a drunk. So he gave her a blessing to take with her, "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made."

Maybe it was Eli's blessing, or maybe it was Hannah's prayer, or maybe it was just God's choice, but however it happened, Hannah bore a son. And though she kept him until he was two or three, ("Until he is weaned," she said), she eventually took him back to Eli and gave the child to him to serve in the temple. If she knew anything about Eli she must have wondered about her vow - leaving her only child in the care of an elderly man who didn't have a very good track record with his own children. But a vow it was and the child was to serve Yahweh, not Eli. Before Hannah left she sang a song of victory in praise of God. Every year she returned to see the child that she had given to God, and every year she took a new little robe that she had made. The child's name was Samuel, which means, "I asked him of the Lord."

If Eli had any feelings for the boy, they aren't recorded. Eli was a rather passive man anyway. Not one to get too emotional about things. One day a wandering prophet came by and gave him a message, which he said came from Yahweh himself. The prophet declared that God said, "You honor your sons above me, Eli. You allow them to fatten themselves on the offerings that are meant for me. So I will cut them off and cut you off, Eli. On the same day both of your sons will die. And after you are gone I will raise up a faithful priest to serve me. And the few who are left in your house after your fall will come to the new priest begging just to eat."

Eli let the words pass without a word. Maybe he paid this wild prophet no mind. After all, who was he to talk with Yahweh when no one else did? But maybe he believed every word.
Samuel continued to grow and to serve in the temple. The Bible says that he was ministering to Yahweh, but since he had no inkling of who Yahweh was, he really served the worldly priest, Eli. One day that all changed.

Eli was in sleeping in his usual spot. He was very old now. His eyes were beginning to fail and he could not see. Sometimes it was just easier for him to lie down and forget about this God-forsaken place he lived in and the omens of doom all around him.

But if the light of Eli's eyes had begun to fail, the lamp of God had not, and it was near this lamp, next to the powerful ark of the covenant, in the temple itself, that Samuel lay down to sleep. As he lay there in the midst of all the trappings of God's presence he heard a voice, "Samuel!"
"Coming," he cried and Samuel jumped up and ran to Eli, ready to serve. "Here I am," he said, and then to remind the forgetful old man, "You called me."

But Eli said, "I didn't call you; go back and lie down." So Samuel went back to his spot near the ark, probably shaking his head.

Again the voice came, "Samuel!" Now this was the voice of Yahweh - that precious jewel that was so rare and so sought after - but Samuel didn't recognize it. And he got up and went back to Eli, "Here I am; you called me."

The old priest was a little annoyed but he softened his tone, "I didn't call you, my son; go back and lie down."

Now Eli should probably have suspected that something was going on by now, but his lack of vision was a problem for more than his eyes. He was tuned out to God's voice as well. Samuel should have suspected something, too, but he had never experienced anything like Yahweh before, even living in the midst of the temple. So when Yahweh God called Samuel a third time, he still ran straight to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."

Finally Eli understood that it was Yahweh. So he told him to go back and lie down once more, but this time to be ready. If Yahweh called again he was to say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

So Samuel went back and lay down to wait. In the dim light of the temple, Yahweh came and stood beside the longhaired boy. God brushed back the hair from his ear and whispered gently, "Samuel, Samuel!"

Samuel said, "I'm listening now."

God told him about some incredible news - so incredible that it would make the ears of anyone who heard it tingle. It would be a deed that would touch all of Israel, but it would start with the downfall of Eli and his sons. God said that Eli would suffer because he had failed to restrain his sons, despite their sins. As Eli himself had said, for these sins there was no sacrifice that could wipe away the stain.

After God left, Samuel lay there in the temple, contemplating this terrifying news. Yahweh had come with news for all Israel, but it would mean the downfall of Eli, who despite his faults was the only father Samuel had ever known. Suddenly Samuel found himself with divided loyalties - finally serving the God he was dedicated to serve, yet still bound to the man who had given him a home.

In the morning Samuel opened the doors to the temple. But he didn't go to find Eli. Finally he heard a voice calling him, "Samuel, my son." This time there was no confusion. He knew it was the voice of Eli. "Coming," he said.

When he came to Eli, the old priest gripped him by the arm. "What did he say to you? Tell me everything. May God strike you down if you keep a single word from me!"

So the boy told him. Everything. And as he told him the old man's grip on his arm slowly loosened. At the end Eli said, "He is Yahweh; he will do what is right in his own eyes."

As Samuel looked at him he must have wondered if Eli really deserved this punishment. After all, Eli had rebuked his sons, which is what God said he wanted. Though Eli was hardly a model priest, he had been smart enough to recognize a mother's fervent prayer and the call of God to a young boy. Even if God never spoke to him, Eli seemed to know when God spoke to others.

But Eli recognized something that Samuel was to realize all too often in his ministry - God chooses the ones God chooses - not because of any merit they have or deed they've done, but just because God is God. And so Eli could accept his fate with those simple words: "He is Yahweh; He will do what is right in his own eyes." In a nation where everyone was doing what was right in his or her own eyes, God was doing the same, and Samuel was going to be God's instrument.

As Samuel grew up, he was able to do what no one had been able to do since the time of Moses and Joshua. He was recognized by all Israel as a prophet. Once again God's voice was heard in a land parched from the lack of it. Eli's time had passed and within a short time, God's word against Phinehas and Hophni was fulfilled.

Yet even in his worldliness, God had used Eli. In fact, God used a lot of rough tools to bring about a new thing in Samuel. God took the unfinished, unvarnished instruments of human existence - a mother's fervent hope and reckless gratitude, a young boy's ignorance and innocence, an old man's worldliness - and fashioned from them something that could bring about a new thing for the people of God. And God does this for no earthly reason that we can determine, but because God is God and God does what is right in God's own eyes.

When I was working with college students in campus ministry, I often felt that one of my biggest roles was to help people listen for their names. We have a generation of bright, brilliant young people who are taking their place in the world. But like all of us they need to hear God calling their name, claiming them as God’s own, and moving them to work for God in the world. I don’t think God stops calling folks, but I do think we sometimes stop listening. And I think we older folks, and yes, I’m including me here, we older folks sometimes don’t help others to listen for God calling their names. There’s a role for crotchety old Elis, too.

A few years ago I went to my old seminary with a group of students who were exploring ministry. They ranged in age from 19 to 22. They are excited about ministry and seminary. They will make excellent clergypersons or laypersons if that’s where they end up. You know what the average age of students in our seminaries is now, though? 37. The average seminary student is 37 years old. My students looked around and said, “Where are my peers?” Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that we have so many second career folks going into the ministry, but the truth of the matter is that we are not helping our young adults and youth to answer a call from God. They may finally get the message. Maybe when they’re 37! But God is calling them now. They just need some encouragement to listen for their name.

Let me close with a story. It’s about a rabbi--Rabbi Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel, who was the greatest rabbi of his time in Europe. This was the man who created the Golem, the animated form of a human being, by putting under its tongue a slip of paper with the unutterable name of God. One night Rabbi Yehuda had a dream: he dreamed that he had died and was brought before the throne. And the angel who stands before the throne said to him, “Who are you?” “I am Rabbi Yehuda of Prague, the maker of the Golem,” he says. “Tell me if my name is written in the names of those who will have a share in the kingdom.”

So the angel goes and reads the names of all the people who have died on that day whose names are written in the book. And Rabbi Yehuda listens but he doesn’t hear his name.

At last, when the angel finished reading, he wept bitterly and cried out against the angel. The angel said, “I have called your name.”

Rabbi Yehuda said, “I didn’t hear it.”

The angel said, “In the book are written the names of all men and women who have ever lived on the earth for every soul is an inheritor of the kingdom. But many come here who have never heard their true names on the lips of human or angel. They have lived believing that they knew their names; and so when they are called to their share in the kingdom, they do not hear their names as their own. They do not recognize that it is for them that the gates of the kingdom are opened. So they must wait here until they hear their names and know them. Perhaps in their lifetime one man or woman has once called them by their right name: here they shall stay until they have remembered. Perhaps no one has ever called them by their right name: here they shall stay until they are silent enough to hear the King of the Universe calling them.”

Rabbi Yehuda woke up and, rising from his bed with tears, he covered his head and lay prostrate on the ground, and prayed, “Master of the Universe! Grant me once before I die to hear my own true name on the lips of my brothers and sisters.”

Hearing my mother calling my name in the department store was like finding home in a strange, strange land. For Samuel sleeping in the presence of God and never even knowing it, hearing his name set his whole life in motion toward God. God is calling the names of people - young and old in this congregation and we can help them listen. And if we do it right, we will also be listening for our own true names. To know the God who has known us from our mother’s womb and before and to know our own true name is the greatest work and the greatest gift of our lives. Thanks be to God.

After the Flood: Life After Baptism

Acts 19:1-7
While Apollo was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior region and arrived in Ephesus, where he discovered some disciples. He said to them, "Did the Holy Spirit seize you when you became believers?"

They said to him, "No, we haven’t even heard about the Holy Spirit."

Then he said, "So into what were you baptized?"

They said, "Into the baptism of John."

Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people thereby that they should believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus."

Upon hearing this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Now there were about twelve of them in all.

When I was in college, after my first year I lived with two roommates who were very different from me. We got along well but we came from different backgrounds and we had very different interests. Bill was studying accounting and business and he was meant to be in that field. He had a head for numbers and he was a whiz with anything in that department. He was a homebody who didn’t like to go out much and who really didn’t like the outdoors but he was a good basketball player and he made a mean tuna fish casserole.

Mike was a hunter who loved being outside and didn’t care much for school. He loved country music and he had a big aquarium in his room, which he would have loved to have stocked with trout. He once got me to skip classes on a Friday so that we could drive to Chicago in the snow to get a Chesapeake Bay retriever puppy from a kennel out there. That’s what I remember about Mike.

What they remember about me was the guitar. I was learning a lot about myself all during those years and I was trying out talents I didn’t know I had. One of those explorations was musical. On impulse one day I bought a guitar and determined that I was going to learn to play this guitar. I was going to teach myself. So for months, every afternoon and most nights, I would sit on the back porch of our house and learn to play guitar.

It sounded pretty horrendous for a really long time. I had no rhythm and my strumming was very awkward. My roommates even years later could do a dead-on parody of my blues strumming – nah, nah, nah, nah, NAHN. And they could still recite the lyrics to my first song, "You live your life in a bottle…" It’s very humbling because I know it was very bad.

But then there was that day. There was that day when I got it. It probably would have come much earlier if I had had sense enough to take lessons, but it was a wonderful day when I "got" what it meant to play guitar. I knew what it took before that. I could read the books and talk about the theory of playing guitar. But that didn’t mean I was really playing guitar. When I "got it" this awkward, jerking strumming became easy and fluid and I suddenly felt that the guitar had become a real instrument, translating what I felt into something that resembled real music. No one was more grateful for that day than my roommates.

Why do I start with that story? Because "getting it" is not just a phenomenon of guitar playing. It’s not just the thing that happens when you really learn to inhabit a new talent or skill – like art or dance or carving. "Getting it" is the point of Jesus’ ministry. At least that’s what it looks like from the gospels.

Jesus goes to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. The Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove and the voice of God calls out, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased." Then Jesus goes out into the desert and when he returns he has a new message for his people: The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. And that’s what gets him into trouble.

You see, good news is not always good news to people who think the old news is good enough. For people who have a lot invested in the way things are and the way they are, the message of change and a new order is a threatening message. For the religious leaders that Jesus confronted the message of the scriptures was clear. They had developed a body of directives that could cover most every eventuality. They knew what rituals to perform and how to observe the Sabbath. They knew when and how it was permissible to work and how to prepare food. They knew what relationships ought to look like. They knew who ought to be in charge.

But something was wrong. Though there was a lot of knowledge of God, there was also a real failure to "get it," to understand what God really asked of them, to really live out of a sense of being in relationship with a God who was transforming the world. It’s scary to live with a God like that. It’s hard to be synchronized with a God who is continually on the move. So when Jesus described the scribes and Pharisees he used the image of "whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside they are full of the bones of the dead" [Mt. 23:27].

What Jesus asked of those who followed him was that they get rid of all the old ways and to accept that their life in the new Christian community was going to look different. Those first disciples gave up home and work and comfort and old ways of thinking and old ways of acting so that they could be ready for the new. It was hard for them. They often didn’t "get it." When Jesus told them to give a crowd something to eat with no resources, they asked "How?" When they tried to keep foreigners and children and women with anointing oils away from Jesus he told them to let them come and they said "Why?" When Jesus told them that he would be handed over to the rulers of the day to suffer and die and rise again and that all of them would fall away, they said "No!" It was hard for those disciples to get it and to live as Easter people in a Good Friday world.

What they needed was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was what Jesus had promised them. "The Holy Spirit," Jesus said, "will teach you what you need to know when I am gone. He will guide you into all truth" [John 16:13]. When they got discouraged, the Spirit would comfort them. When they got confused, the Spirit would guide them. When they forgot what Jesus had done and said…when they forgot who they were, the Spirit would be the presence of Christ with them.

That’s what happened to the disciples on Pentecost. The Spirit descended on them as they were sitting huddled together after Jesus had left them. And that’s when they "got it." Men and women who had followed Jesus and marveled at his miracles and wondered about his authority and were amazed at his teaching and overwhelmed by his resurrection suddenly found that they could do things they never thought they could do before. They were performing miracles. They were given power from a source beyond themselves. They were teaching the crowds. They were experiencing the resurrection in their lives and in their bodies and in their community. What they had known in their heads they translated into their lives. They got it!

So now when they traveled the land they weren’t satisfied to pass along a set of knowledge. They weren’t content until God was alive in the midst of their hearers, until Christ was not locked in a borrowed tomb but calling them together in a new community, until the Holy Spirit was filling them with a fire they had not known before. These new Christians were ferocious.

So we see Paul in the passage we read this morning, going to Ephesus and running into a dozen disciples – people who had heard the news of Jesus and who were convinced of the need to follow Jesus. They had heard the teaching of a previous teacher and they had even been baptized, repenting of their sin. But Paul must have seen that something was missing. Something was not quite right. So the first things he says to them is not a polite greeting but a piercing question that goes right to the heart of the problem: Did the Holy Spirit seize you when you became believers?

They are surprised. The Holy Spirit? They don’t even know what the Holy Spirit is.

"So into what were you baptized?" Paul asks.

"Into the baptism of John. Isn’t that enough?"

But, no, it isn’t. John had a following of his own, but many of his followers had misunderstood who he was. There were many that talked about John as if he were the Messiah, the one that Israel was waiting on. But John was the forerunner. He wanted the people to be ready and his baptism was meant to prepare them for the one whom would follow him, the one who would usher in a new age. John called them to repentance, but Jesus came to announce a new baptism by water, yes, but also by the Holy Spirit. And on the spot, the dozen disciples are baptized in the name of Jesus and when Paul laid hands on them, Pentecost happens again. They come alive and speak in new tongues and prophesy of God’s new kingdom. After all this time, they "get it"!

It is difficult for us to read these stories of the early church in the book of Acts because we envy them. Why can’t we believe like they believed? Why can’t we experience the power and miracles they experienced? Why can’t we be the disciples we perceive them to be?

We know what it’s like not to "get it", don’t we? We know how easy it is to accept the world’s definition of who we are. The world tells us that we are a bundle of needs and urges that seek fulfillment. The world tells us that there is no sense in worrying about the future, because what matters is only the here and now. The world tempts us to medicate ourselves or intoxicate ourselves or gorge ourselves in order to escape the gnawing sense of emptiness at our heart. The world tells us we don’t need God because believing in God diminishes us or oppresses us or enslaves us to old ideas and an outdated moral code. When we accept this definition of who we are, the early church seems like a fairy tale with its stories of power and life and community. But you know what? The world tells us all these things, but the world is wrong.

The world is wrong because it thinks too little of us. We are not just a collection of animal impulses, we are creatures of a God who has a destiny and a purpose for each of us. We don’t just live in the present, we stand with the future because we know that the story has an ending and the ending is God and the ending is good. We don’t have to shield ourselves from despair because despite the brokenness in our families and our communities and our lives, God is binding all the wounds and reconciling all things. Belief is not a retreat into oppression and restrictions, it is a leap into freedom, a freedom based on the love we know in Jesus Christ. The world is not just wrong, it is deluded. It denies God because it thinks God threatens who we are but the truth is that we can’t know who we are until we know God and confess that Jesus is Lord of anything and everything that opposes life.

How do I know this? Because of the water in that font. It’s not magic water and there is nothing magic about baptism. But the water is a sign. It is a sign that Christ is at work in me, transforming me and welcoming me into a new world and a new community. When we go through the water, Paul tells us, we die with Christ. We put to death all those things that need to die so that we can live. We leave behind the lies, the deceptions, the claims that the world and the devil would make on us. If we are united with Christ, sin has no power over us anymore. And when we come up from that water we live with Christ. We enter the life of the Holy Spirit. And in this life the broken pieces of our lives are collected together…the loose strands are brought back into the whole…the pointless wanderings of our souls are directed toward our soul’s author.

Now…If that’s what happens and if most of us have been baptized, why do we find it so hard to live like those early Christians? Why do we find it so hard to be filled with the Spirit? Why does life after baptism look so often like life before baptism?

Maybe it’s because we’re not seeking to grow in holiness. If we never take the risk of strumming clumsily on a guitar we never get to that time when it feels as natural to us as breathing. If we do not practice the means of grace…if we don’t read the Bible, and pray, and meet with one another in worship and study…if we don’t place ourselves in service to the world around us…if we don’t love one another…if we don’t dip our finger into this water and remind ourselves that we are baptized…how shall we grow? How will we "get it"?

We are people of the water. I’m not just speaking of us as Christians now. As people of the Eastern Shore (and I include myself in that now, even though I’m a ‘come here’), as people of the Eastern Shore we are a people of the water. It is all around us. Sometimes when I have been on the spine too long I go out to the water just to remind myself of where I am, and it never fails to remind me of who I am, too. This water is vast and mysterious and dangerous. But it is deep and profound and nourishing and it is full of life.

So is that water. We are people of the water and inheritors of the Spirit. Don’t forget who you are. You know…you know up here that God is seeking you out and inviting you to life. Now live it. Thanks be to God.

All Things New

Revelation 21:1-6a (NRSV)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."

Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end."

So, this is the week I started to feel it. My birthday is right before Christmas so I have an opportunity to reflect on the coming of another year of life just before the coming of another year on the calendar. It is a great reminder of my mortality and the transience of time.

Every year it happens. In the aftermath of Christmas I am surrounded by the wrapping paper and the bows. I look at my belt buckle and know that I have moved back out a notch. I feel sluggish and tired. I feel aches I didn’t have before. I look ahead at the year to come and I know that there is a mountain of things to do on the horizon and I wonder if I have the energy to tackle them. I look back on the dreams of years past and I say: Why haven’t I saved more for retirement? Why haven’t I been able to get back into the jeans I wore in college? Why haven’t I learned to really play guitar? Why haven’t I written the great American novel? Why haven’t I read the Bible more? Why haven’t I learned to pray? Why am I not the wise, even-tempered, unworried soul that I thought I would be at this age? I try to keep myself from asking this question but it’s there just on the horizon: Where did it all go wrong?

That’s when I look at the calendar and see that the old year is coming to an end. I’m going to throw away that 2005 calendar and there will be a whole new year up there. 2006! 2006 is filled with potential and possibility. 2006 doesn’t know anything about my shortcomings and failures. 2006 isn’t burdened with all the things I failed to do in 2005. It’s a fresh year…an open year…a, well, a New Year! And in a New Year I can be a new Alex!

Yes, that’s it. In this New Year I will work out and lose the weight I’ve been putting on. I will be attentive to my friends and my family. I will be a better steward of my money and my time. I will write more and call my folks more. I will watch less TV and check my e-mail and IM’s less often. I will establish a devotional life that will draw me closer to God. I will read the Bible and say my prayers. I will study and learn about Jesus. I will serve and love my neighbors, especially the poorest of my neighbors. I will go to bed early and get up early. I will walk. I will bring flowers to my wife. I will floss.

I will be perfect and I will be perfect because it is a New Year and whatever the old year was the New Year can be better. Whatever I was in the old year I don’t have to be any more. Because I have decided…no, I have resolved…that’s it…I’m making a resolution…and even though my will was not strong enough to resist that large piece of caramel cake on December 31st, because it is January 1st I will be able to resist it today. I have made some New Year’s Resolutions and I will be perfect.

Is that how you’re feeling today? I know we’re tired from all of the festivities and we’d like to get a little routine back to our lives, but there is a part of us that wants this year to be different…right? So we come to this day and we make some promises to ourselves, even though we know that many of them will be empty, forgotten words by the time next week rolls around.

John Wesley, the first Methodist back in the 18th century, got himself in a lot of controversies by insisting that perfection was not only a possibility for Christians, but that Christians ought to be expecting perfection. United Methodist pastors, me included, are asked publicly, when they are preparing for ordination, "Do you expect to be made perfect in this lifetime?" It’s the kind of question that makes you gulp before you give the expected answer, which is "Yes."

When you put it like that it, it sounds ridiculous. Perfect? Us? I can’t even be charitable to my crazy relatives for four hours at Christmas. Surely you’re looking for someone else to be perfect!
What puts the lie to all of our New Year’s Resolutions…the death knell for all of them…is my failure to be perfect and my persistence in being pretty darned imperfect. I know that God created me for prayer and praise but I am so far from perfection that I forget not only who God is but who I am. I know in my heart and in my soul that I am meant for something more than petty distractions and mindless TV but I am entertaining myself to death. I know that I have the potential to be a child of God but I can hang in there with the best of the children of the devil. I may have heard of perfection but if you ask me for directions to it I think I’d have to say that you can’t get there from here.

The problem is the caramel cake problem. The reason my will and resolutions are not enough to move me toward being the person God wants me to be is the same reason my will and resolutions seldom work in keeping me from caramel cake – my will is permanently flawed. As children of Adam and Eve who, like Humpty Dumpty, had a great fall, we live our lives under the shadow of sin. And even though we have the best of intentions, even though we have the capacity for goodness, even though we know the rules and can distinguish right from wrong, even though we sometimes show flashes of brilliance and moments of greatness, when we look at ourselves it is as if we are looking into funhouse mirrors that distort our image so much that we look ridiculous. Sin does that to us and it affects us right down to our core.

So when I turn my will toward something…when I aim at something and feel that this time I’m going to do it because I am resolved…I find that I am an unreliable agent. You know the old saying that you can’t trust anyone but yourself. Christians know something much rawer…you can’t even trust yourself.

People who have gone through great illnesses and traumas know this already. When you are in the grip of something like cancer or grief you know that your resources are insufficient to move you forward. People who have struggled with addictions to drugs or alcohol know this. The first step in confronting addiction is the admission that you can’t do it alone, that you don’t have it altogether, that you need help because your own will and your own way are unreliable guides. You need a higher power.

Wesley believed that we could be restored and that we could be healed. Wesley believed that, despite our flaws and failures, despite the fact that we have been warped by the effects of sin, our will could be renewed. Perfection was possible for us, but only when we let go of the illusion that we could trust our own resources to become perfect.

Our scripture readings today give us some very different perspectives on how God works in the world. In the reading from Ecclesiastes we hear the wisdom of one who has realized the mixed nature of life in this world. Here we know joy and we know sorrow. We know war and we know peace. We build things up and we tear things down. There are times when we weep and times when we dance. For the writer of Ecclesiastes, who is sometimes called the Preacher, there is nothing new under the sun.

The vision of Revelation at the very end of the Bible is very different. Here John sees that something new is breaking into the world as we know it. There is a new heaven and a new earth. And in the city of God all mourning and pain and death will be left behind because God will be in our midst. God will make camp among mortals and wipe away every tear from our eyes. When Jesus comes again, it won’t be business as usual. "Behold," John hears Jesus say. "Behold…Look, I am making everything new."

That’s an important phrase. "I am making all things new." Who is making all things new? It’s not me. It’s not us who can transform our lives into the shape of the kingdom to come. My will is not sufficient. The best resolution I can ever make on a New Year’s Eve will never survive until the end of time. It is God at work in Jesus Christ that is transforming us. It is Christ who makes all things new.

That’s important because what we are good at is making things old. We are pros at lapsing into old habits and old routines and never breaking the endless cycle that runs from "things have always been like this" to "things will never get any better." Even at our best, when we confront our bad habits with nerves of steel and an iron will, we know how easily broken and bent that steel and iron are.

If it is Christ who is making all things new then we need a new image for who we are. Perhaps we are more like concrete being poured into a form. Christ takes the sand and rock and grit of our lives and puts it into a shape that is stronger than any of those elements on their own. Paul talks about this when he warns the Roman Christians, "Don’t be conformed to this world…don’t take on the shape of the world around you. Don’t give your will over to the forces that surround you. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds…Take on the shape of Christ and be conformed to his image" [Romans 12:2]. Give your will to the one who can truly make of you something new.

If we are going to be made perfect, brothers and sisters, it isn’t going to happen because we decide to use the change of the calendar to give it the old college try one more time. If we are going to be made perfect it is because we will admit that the old ways and the old college try just aren’t working any more and they never have. We need to give ourselves to God, to release ourselves from the illusion that we are in control and to accept God’s will above our own. And God’s will is that we should be transformed.

So what I’m saying is that you should rip up your New Year’s Resolutions and prepare some New Year’s Resignations. Resign from those things that keep you from giving yourself to God. Resign from the illusion that you can make it on your own and find some fellow Christians who can help hold you accountable to God’s will and intentions for your life. I am continually amazed at the power people in this congregation find in small groups, covenant groups, study groups, and Emmaus reunion groups. You should know that the United Methodist clergy in this area are meeting in a covenant group as well and I would not be able to be your pastor, to dare to be your pastor, if I were not meeting with others who can remind me of who I am and to keep me connected. Resign from doing it on your own. You’re not that self-sufficient and not that good.

Resign from the distractions that keep you from seeing God. We live with so much input…so much stimulation from so many sources. Don’t just do something…stand there and listen for the God who is seeking you out.

Resign from the burden of living up to a standard that is not God’s. Whether the expectations are those of peers at school or the people you work with or the way business is done, if you are being asked to be someone you wouldn’t want to be in here on Sunday morning, resign.

Resign from a culture that glorifies violence and intoxication and easy, thoughtless sexual relations. Resign from a culture that tells us with each advertisement that the highest thing we can aspire to is to be a consumer. You are more than that. So much more than that. It is a new year and there is so much potential and possibility in 2006. But there is also so much potential and possibility in you.

John Wesley used to gather his Methodists together at the beginning of the year for a covenant service. It was one of those things that made Methodists stand out. No one else welcomed the New Year in this way.

What he asked the Methodists to do was to remind themselves of who they were and to whom they had given themselves. They didn’t resolve to do anything by themselves, they resigned their will to God and trusted that God would make of them something new because that is what God has promised. God is making all things new.

A shortened version of the prayer John Wesley used is found in our hymnal on page #607. I’d like to invite you to say that prayer with me this morning, but only if you are ready to accept the implication. These are not words to be said lightly. When you say these words you say "No" to what the world tells us about who we are. When we covenant together with God we know that some things about us will need to change and that can be painful. We need help to keep this covenant and that’s why we say it together.

If you believe that God is transforming the world, including you and me, I invite you to say this prayer with me. If you believe that New Year’s Resolutions are not enough to bring about true and lasting change, I invite you to say this prayer with me. If you are ready and willing and expect perfection, I invited you to say this prayer with me. Because the only way we can get there is if God does with us what only God can do.

Let us pray:
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low by thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.