Listening For God in All the Wrong Places

I’m not averse to getting sermon images from movies. I happen to believe that Hollywood, despite its excesses, errors, and general unreality, has a collection of some of the finest creative minds and visual artists. Every now and then they produce masterpieces that remind you of the potential of film, as when they put out things like The Wizard of Oz, E.T., or more recently Bridge to Terebithia. Of course, far too often, they give us films like Attack of the Zombie Moonmaids, part 4, but the potential is there and movies often stimulate me to see biblical passages in fresh ways.

So I’m going to start with a movie reference today but I have to say - this is not a masterpiece. In fact, I can’t even tell you the plot of this film because it’s so ridiculous and incomprehensible. Last weekend one of the first things we did with Eddie was to take him to Belle Haven to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End at the Monoplex. I really hope we’re at series end, too, because the point of these movies set sail a long time ago as far I’m concerned.

But having said that, this movie is a beautiful thing to look at and there is a moment from it that came to mind as Eddie and I were talking about today’s scripture. There is a scene early in the movie when Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, is wandering around in a kind of limbo in Davy Jones’ Locker following his death. Don’t ask me how he died or how he got there or what Davy Jones’ Locker is. I don’t remember and it really doesn’t matter. (It’s a ridiculous movie.)

However he got there, Jack Sparrow is aboard his ship, the Black Pearl, in the middle of a vast desert, all of which is in this limbo land. Jack is delusional, fighting off images of himself and trying to understand where he is and what he’s supposed to do. Finally he jumps overboard and tries to drag his ship across the flat, desert basin. It’s a dry and forbidding environment. A rock turns into a crab and watches him try to make this futile march with his ship behind him. In the end, Jack falls backwards onto the ground looking up at the sky. He is lost, confused, weak and hopeless. So he falls asleep until a ton of rocks turn into crabs that roll the ship out to the ocean. (I told you – the movie makes no sense.)

That’s a good image to start with because it is, in a way, similar to where we find Elijah the Prophet in this bible passage from 1 Kings. He is out in a trackless desert, lost, confused, weak, and hopeless and falling asleep beneath a solitary shrub that is not even fit to give decent shade. It’s an odd place for Elijah to be since it comes right on the heels of Elijah’s greatest success.

This story is a prequel to the tale we told last week in the sermon. You might remember from that story that Ahab – the king of Israel – had strayed from God. He had married a foreign princess named Jezebel, who encouraged the worship of Baal – the Canaanite nature god. This was something that good Israelites were never supposed to do. They had been chosen from all the people of the earth to be servants of the one true God, who had chosen to be known by their name – Yahweh, the God of Israel. If they were faithful to their God there was no room for other gods. Every time they forgot this, (and they often did), they got into trouble. It’s not so hard to understand. When we forget who we are and who we are supposed to be faithful to, we get into trouble.

But Elijah had challenged the prophets of Baal to a mountaintop showdown. He faced down 450 of them as they offered sacrifices to their respective gods. The God of Israel clearly prevailed and Elijah wiped out all 450 of the prophets of Baal. It should have been a moment of great triumph. Elijah had restored right worship and had revealed who was really in charge. But Ahab, the king, was not ready to stand up to his role as Yahweh’s anointed and Queen Jezebel was even less repentant. She vowed to have Elijah killed by the following day.

But this was Elijah – the man of God. Elijah had called down a punishing drought on the land. He had raised a young boy from his deathbed. He had conquered 450 on a mountaintop and mocked them as he did it. So when Jezebel made her threat, what did he do? That’s right. He ran. He fled for his life.

It’s a good reminder that success does not always bring contentment. Sometimes it brings the taste of dissatisfaction. After all he’d done – there was still an adversary who wouldn’t recognize his greatness. There was still a foe who wished him ill.

Everything collapses in on Elijah. He can’t see his way forward anymore. His confidence evaporates. So he runs away to the desert and that’s where we find him – laid out like Jack Sparrow, sleeping by a broom tree, which is nothing more than another spiny desert shrub.

But if Elijah has run away, God hasn’t. And angel from God comes and touches Elijah. “Get up and eat,” the angel says. There is a cake and a jar of water. If Elijah had been paying attention he would have recognized these as exactly the things he had asked of a poor woman in the middle of the drought. She thought she was dying but these became signs of life. But now, seeing the same items, Elijah doesn’t get it – can’t get it. He eats the cake, drinks the water and lies back down.
The angel returns a second time and explains to Elijah that he needs to eat because he’s got a big journey ahead. So Elijah eats and drinks and gets up to walk. It is a big journey. 40 days and 40 nights, which is Bible talk for “a really long time.”

He ends up at Mt. Horeb, which is the mountain where Moses had heard God’s voice in a burning bush and where he had received the Ten Commandments and the Law in fire and clouds and shaking of the earth. If you come to Mt. Horeb you might expect to meet God in some dramatic way. But Elijah goes into a cave and sits.

A voice comes to Elijah. “What are you doing in here, Elijah?”

“What am I doing in here? What am I doing in here?! Have you seen what’s happening? I have done all that you have asked of me. You won’t find anybody more zealous than me in representing Yahweh. But look what’s happened to Israel. They have forgotten what you gave them on this mountain. They have torn down your altars. They have killed your prophets. I am the only one left and they want to kill me, too.”

He overstated the case a little bit. God tells him a little later that there are actually 7,000 faithful Israelites still remaining. But the situation Elijah describes is still fairly accurate. It’s bad. The forces of good are on the run. Things don’t look good for the home team. But Elijah has not been paying attention. He has forgotten all the preparation God has been making. He can’t see the signs. He can’t believe that God still has a future for him and his people. He’s gone to the mountain of God but he’s still sitting in a cave.

Does this ever happen to you? Are you ever so turned in on yourself, so captivated by your fears that you can’t see what God is holding out for you? Do ever find yourself in the midst of situations where you know you should be joyous – where you know that you have everything to live for – where you know that there are people who love you, that God loves you – that there are things and people you can trust and rely on and yet…even so you are in a cave of your own disillusionment and fear.

I have had periods in my life when I have been in that cave. I have struggled with depression and if you have ever struggled with depression you know what its like. Things that used to give you joy lose their luster. It’s not just feeling sad; it’s losing the capacity for joy and connection with others. It’s as if the whole world has been sucked into a black hole from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It’s that all-consuming.

But even if it’s not clinical depression, there are times when it is easy for us to forget that God is there. It’s easy to lose sight of the messages that are all around us. It’s easy for us to neglect the practices of looking for God in every place.

The painter Vincent Van Gogh struggled with the darkness. He was continually in search of something he could never quite put into words. But he could paint what he sought. In his famous painting “Starry, Starry Night,” he depicts a night sky that is full of swirls and colors. There is a melancholy air to it all but there is also vibrancy and life. It’s the same vibrancy that you see in his fields and sunflowers. Everything he paints is pulsing with a supernatural energy and is bathed in other-worldly light. There is danger, yes, but there is God, too. Van Gogh once said, “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”[i] He wanted to “go to sea” and find the voice that was speaking to him.

What Van Gogh glimpsed in the world he often failed to hold on to. Elijah struggled too. So it’s no surprise that when God tells him to go out to the mountainside so that he could be in God’s presence – Elijah stays in the cave. A violent wind comes and tears at the mountain. There is an earthquake and then fire. It’s like the revelations to Moses all over again. But God is not in any of those things.

What finally gets Elijah’s attention was the faint sound of a whisper. You know what they say – when you want to get someone’s attention, whisper. And God whispers because God wants Elijah to be reconnected – to hear as if he were listening to a lover’s voice.

Elijah wraps his head in a cloak and comes out of the cave. The voice comes again, “Elijah, what are you doing here?”

Again Elijah responds in the same way – the same words – the same excuses, the same sense of despair. But now God is going to send him back to life, so he gives Elijah some marching orders, almost as if he hadn’t heard Elijah’s complaints at all. But God knows that if Elijah’s despair and depression was the thing that determined who he was, there was not a thing in the universe that could fill it up, not even God. When a person is turned in upon him or herself there is no room for even the thing they most need to live.

Last spring we read C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce in a small group. That book is Lewis’ imaginative exploration of what hell must be like. And the most surprising thing about hell in his telling is how close it is to heaven. The people who are resident in hell are still surrounded by goodness and possibility and God but they continue in death as they were in life – prevented by their preoccupations and sins from seeing how close God really is.

So it’s right that God does not give in to Elijah’s view of the world. (Not that God needs any validation from me.) God doesn’t try to soothe Elijah or be understanding of his position. God just says, “O.K., Elijah, let’s just start walking back.” And he does.

That’s pretty characteristic of God. God doesn’t accept our view of the world; God just starts walking us in a new direction. I think that’s why Jesus does that mystifying thing that he does when a potential disciple says, “I’ll follow you, but first let me bury my father.” Then Jesus tells him he’s not ready. [Matt. 8:21-22] Jesus doesn’t let the grief of that man, or the wealth of the young ruler, or the legalism on the lawyer, or the financial obligations of another man determine their life’s course. They all had needs and burdens but they didn’t have needs and burdens worth having. What they needed was a purpose that gave them life. What they needed was to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

So Elijah needs to start walking on God’s path instead of lamenting his own. It must be his free choice to do so. He has no way of knowing what the path will require of him at the outset, but the first step is to let God take the lead.

As Methodists we have a strong belief in the role of human free will. We don’t believe that God has predestined every action we will undertake. God wants followers who are not orchestrated like puppets, but capable of using their gifts as co-creators with god. It makes Methodists a little nervous when people say, “God has a plan for me to the extent that my every moment is determined by God.” We believe that God has an intention and that God will ultimately bring all things to perfection, but God’s intention is that all will be saved and the means is for us to freely accept the freedom God offers us in Christ.

But if we Methodists don’t believe that our wills are coerced by God, we do believe that God is telling us in so many ways and by so many means what it is that we should do. And if God is not using an earthquake or a whirlwind or a pillar of fire in your life to tell you this, perhaps there are some faint whispers that turn your head and guide your feet in a new way.

I believe that God is speaking to you. I believe that God knows the hurts and fears of our hearts. God knows the wounds and the grief. God knows the sins that we may feel can never be washed away. God know how we can turn in on ourselves and how we can lose the light in our eyes and the love of our hearts. But none of those things should determine who we are. If they do then we are doomed.

What determines our life is the life we know in Christ, who died with us and for us to take away the sins of the world. If anything else claims that place for us it is as demonic as the temples of Baal. And as people who are listening for God’s voice we should know that God has things for us to do.

Do you hear that? That whisper as light and as powerful as the breeze on the bay? That’s God calling your name. Thanks be to God.

1 Kings 19:1-21
Then Ahab let Jezebel know all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets by the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, "May the gods do thus and so to me and more if by this time tomorrow I have not made your life like the life of one of them."
Seeing his adversary, he arose and fled for his life to Beersheba, which is in Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself continued into the wilderness a day's journey and came and sat under a solitary shrub. He asked that his life might be taken. "I have too much, YHWH. Take my life, for I am not greater than my ancestors."
He lay down and fell asleep beneath the solitary shrub. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat."
He looked and, what do you know, by his head there was a cake baked on glowing coals and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again.
The angel of YHWH came back a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat because the journey will be too much for you."
He got up, ate and drank and, in the strength of that meal, walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God - Horeb. There he entered a cave and stayed there. Suddenly the word of God came to him and said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He said, "I have been wholly zealous for YHWH, the God of armies, because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets by the sword. I alone am left and they seek to take my life."
YHWH said, "Go out and stand on the face on the mountain before YHWH." And YHWH passed by. A great and mighty wind tore at the mountain and it shattered the rocks of the mountain before YHWH. But YHWH was not in the wind. Then after the wind there came an earthquake, but YHWH was not in the earthquake. Then after the earthquake there came a fire, but YHWH was not in the fire. And after the fire there came a sound like a faint whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in a cloak and came to stand at the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He said, "I have been wholly zealous for YHWH, the God of armies, because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets by the sword. I alone am left and they seek to take my life."
Then the LORD said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus;”

[i] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vincent_van_gogh.html

Enemy Mine

Corn at the Roanoke Annual Conference

I’ve got a story to tell this morning and it’s not a pretty one. It involves lying, deception, abuse of power, corruption at the highest levels of government, greed, oppression, and murder. I’ve got your attention now, don’t I? Here’s the strangest thing—it’s a story from the Bible. Are you surprised? Now, you won’t find it in most children’s Bibles. They may have made a Veggie Tales tape about it, I’m not sure. But it’s there and there’s a lesson in this story, not only for the rich and powerful but for all of us who forget who we are and what we’re supposed to be about as God’s people. You want to hear more?

The story begins a long time ago when the people of Israel were ruled by kings. Well, actually that’s the first mistake we can make in telling this story. There were kings in Israel but the real ruler of Israel was not the king but YHWH, the God of Israel. At least that was the understanding in the book of I Samuel. In that book the prophet Samuel worried that the people would get this interpretation wrong. Ever since they had come into the Promised Land there had been people saying, “We need a king like other nations. We’re being oppressed by other nations around us. We’re not united. We need a king!”

But Israel was not like other nations. They were one nation under God and God was not about to let them forget the true source of their protection and strength. Samuel spoke for God and said, “You really don’t want a king, people of Israel. A king will take your sons and send them to war. A king will take your daughters and make them servants in the palace. A king will take the best of your land, your vineyards, and the best part of your harvest. When a king gets power, he will abuse it and you will be his slaves.” [1 Sa. 8:10-18]

But the people said, “No, we want a king so that we can be like other nations.” So Samuel, with YHWH’s grudging approval, anointed the first of Israel’s kings. But these kings were not to be like the kings of other lands. They were to be stewards of the land because they didn’t own the land, God did. They were to be protectors of the people because the people didn’t exist to serve the king; their duty was to serve God. Kings were to be the guardians of justice, especially for the poor, because there was no other power to aid the powerless.

The first king was Saul and Saul was a miserable failure. Three chapters after he is anointed king, Samuel was announcing that he had been rejected by God for not obeying God’s command. The next king was David, the greatest of Israel’s kings. He made Jerusalem his capital and united the twelve tribes. He was a strong ruler and leader who loved God. But even David made some fantastic blunders. One day he was out on the roof of his palace when he should have been with his troops in the field. He looked down at the neighboring house and saw a woman bathing. His desire got the best of him and he took her into his house and when she became pregnant as a result of this encounter, he had her husband, one of his faithful soldiers, killed to cover up the crime. What Samuel said seemed to be coming true—the king will take your sons and send them off to war and take your daughters as servants in the palace. The king will take what the king wants.

King Solomon was great and wise, but he had his flaws, too. He allowed his foreign wives, (yes, that’s wives plural—the Bible says he had 700 wives and 300 concubines)…he allowed his wives to turn his heart away from the worship of the God of Israel. Sowed the seeds for the division of the kingdom and used conscripted labor to build his great public works projects.

There were others we could mention, too, but our story today is about King Ahab, king of Israel. Ahab married a foreign bride, too—a princess from Phoenicia by the name of Jezebel. That’s an unusual name. Not too many girls today are named Jezebel. You’ll find out why in just a minute.
Jezebel’s main problem was that she just didn’t fit in with Israelite society. She was a follower of Baal, the Canaanite nature god, and Israel, of course, was ruled by YHWH. So she tried to make the worship of Baal the established religion and ran into the prophet Elijah who embarrassed and then killed the prophets of Baal at a fire competition on the mountaintop. Jezebel didn’t like this, of course, and she vowed to kill Elijah and she must have had some pull in the palace because she put the fear into Elijah and he ran off to the wilderness to escape her. Ahab was pretty quiet through the whole affair.

Well, Ahab got him a new winter palace down in the Jezreel area so that he could escape the winter chill at the regular palace in Samaria, which was up in the mountains. Ahab was down checking the place out when he noticed a plot of land right next to the new palace. Ahab had dreams of becoming a gardener so he said to himself, “Now that little plot of land would make a nice little vegetable patch. I can put in some zucchini and squash, maybe some Better Boy tomatoes along the edge of the plot there. It’s a shame there’s a vineyard on it. I’ll just have to go buy that piece of property.”

So he sought out the owner, a man by the name of Naboth. He was very cordial and made Naboth a generous offer. He said, “I’ll give you a better vineyard or I’ll pay you a very fair price, just let me have that piece of property.”

But Naboth knew that the land was not his. It was God’s. And the Israelites had some strong beliefs about the land. Since it was God’s it could not be sold long-term. In order for families to be able to have security down through the years, the land was to revert back to the original families at least every fifty years during the year of Jubilee. Naboth wasn’t going to jeopardize his family’s security by letting someone else have the land—even if the someone else was King Ahab. “No,” he said, “YHWH forbid I should give you my family inheritance.”

Well, this put Ahab in a blue funk. He went back to Samaria and lay down on his royal bed with his face to the wall and sulked. Jezebel was passing by his room and said, “What’s up?” and Ahab told her the whole story, emphasizing what a fair deal he had made. But Jezebel, remember, was from a different culture. She didn’t care about fair deals at all. Where she came from kings were kings and when they wanted something they took it. That’s how her father always behaved. So when Ahab finishes his little sob story about how he really wanted the land but Naboth wouldn’t give it up, Jezebel says, “Who is the king of Israel?”

To which Ahab responds, “Well, that’d be me.”

“Well, you’re going to get that plot of land. Just let me handle it.” And she goes off to arrange Naboth’s downfall. What she does is pretty awful. She uses Ahab’s seal to set up a public fast in Jezreel, Naboth’s hometown. Now this is a religious event that she intends to use for her own purposes. A religious event that is designed for the worship of God that she is going to use to her own ends. So now we’ve got abuse of office, abuse of the king’s religious authority, why not perversion of justice? She arranges for Naboth to be seated in a very public place at the fast and for two scoundrels to sit next to Naboth and to loudly accuse him of cursing God and the king, which, of course, Naboth would never do. But it only takes two witnesses to seal a man’s doom and even though it’s a fast with no food around, Naboth’s goose is cooked. They take him outside and stone him to death. What’s murder when you’ve gone this far?

Word gets back to Jezebel, she goes in to Ahab and says, “Problem solved. The vineyard is yours. Why don’t you go check it out?” Ahab doesn’t ask any questions. Doesn’t even seem curious about how this was arranged. He may not be willing to break the law, but he doesn’t have to. He’s got plenty of people, including Jezebel, who are more than willing to do it for him.
I told you this was a sad, sorry story. We’ve seen the worst side of human beings so far in this tale. We’ve seen people who follow their own desires and understandings without any regard for what it does to other people, to the social order, or to their relationship with God. Looks like old Samuel was right. Kings, with no limits on their power, will forget that they are not the rulers of Israel and will assume that Israel exists to serve them.

But that’s not the end of the story. Elijah shows up. Remember Elijah? Elijah the prophet shows up just as Ahab is checking out his new vineyard and planning where to put the potato patch. When Ahab sees him he knows it means trouble. He says, “So you found me, my enemy?” Elijah represents God for Ahab, and God was the last person Ahab wanted to hear from.

Elijah doesn’t mince words. He says, “You have killed and you have taken possession of this vineyard. The Lord says, ‘I will destroy you and your house.’”

Now this sounds like bad news, and it is. But there is a note of grace here because Ahab repents at this point and wears sackcloth and goes about dejectedly. (That part came easy because he was a pro at sulking). When God sees this, God relents and does not destroy Ahab immediately. Eventually, however, both Ahab and Jezebel and their whole house meet violent ends.

Wow! What do we do with a story like that? We could say that there’s a lesson here about how power corrupts and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. But that would be a little too easy and it would be easy for us to believe that this message is not for us, because most of us do not believe that we are powerful people, even though, compared to many parts of the world we are.

We could say that the moral here is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the palace wall and then go on to talk about how we should be content with what we have and not be greedy. But I don’t believe this is an object lesson on greed. Besides the fact that there are a whole lot of other sins on display here besides just greed, the fundamental sin is not that Ahab wanted a garden, but that he had forgotten whose land he was coveting.

Naboth, you see, knew that he was a caretaker of the land, protecting his family’s inheritance and God’s designated means of offering security to the people of Israel. Ahab, on the other hand, saw the opportunity to possess something and he didn’t understand why Naboth wouldn’t trade one possession for another. In Israel though, the land could not be possessed forever, it was to be cared for and passed on.

Ahab was confronted by this when Elijah showed up. He called him his enemy. The word of the Lord came as a threat because he had forgotten what he was supposed to be doing and whom he was supposed to be serving. Since his desire was focused on something he wanted to possess, he had misplaced his desire for God so he could only see God as a threat now—an enemy.

We know that feeling, don’t we? It’s very easy to get wrapped up in the desire to possess things or to control people or to use people. Especially in a culture like ours that presents objects and even people as things to be consumed, as answers to our needs. If I just had that face cream I could have clear skin and I would no longer feel like the ugly duckling of the 8th grade classroom. If I could be friends with Dickie Foster I would no longer feel inadequate and boring. If I just drink this drink or smoke this smoke or eat this food I’ll fill up the empty spaces in my life, I’ll conquer my fears, I’ll get past the wounds, I’ll forget about the pain. If I can just associate myself with this brand name or that Nike swoosh or this make of car, maybe I won’t have to worry about what my real identity is. Sound familiar?

This is the stuff our culture feeds us. But when Elijah comes he reminds us that what we’re really meant to be are stewards of an identity that God has given us already. And the identity we have been given is that we are God’s people, God’s children. The desire we are meant to have is for God. And the things around us and the people around us are to be enjoyed as the means of God’s grace coming to us. Christian community is a means of grace that opens up a window on God. Bread and wine become more than food and drink to be eaten and used up—they are a means of grace, a window on God. The world around us, the people we meet, the work we do, can all be a means of grace, and a window on God.

But only if we acknowledge that God is coming to us in each of these ways and that the God who reaches out to us is not our enemy, but our salvation. God is not the source of our destruction, but the ground of our existence. And we know this because we have seen God. We have seen God in many ways, but most powerfully and most definitively in Jesus Christ. In Christ we have know that the God who calls to us is love. Always love. Always love.

There’s also a message for us here about strength, something that is appropriate for us to talk about on Fathers Day. What the people of Israel wanted in the midst of the decay and falling apart of their nation was strength and they looked for a king to display that strength. What we look for in our leaders, in our fathers, is strength. But it’s not just physical strength. It’s not about being powerful, because we all know how easily power can be abused. What God calls for the king to be is a strong man directed toward good ends. A strong man who will protect and guide and instruct others in the ways of justice. A strong man who will serve the people and who will recognize to whom true strength belongs.

Fathers, we are called to be the same for those who depend on us. Strong, yes, but strong and directed toward protecting and guiding and instructing. We are not made strong to get our own way. We are made strong to serve. There is no better image of what God desires for fatherhood than a man who has bent his heart towards God and who loves out of that knowledge.

Who is this God who meets us in the garden? Is it the God who is an enemy of all that we have done? Or is it a God who put us in a garden to begin with and who calls us to care for all the gifts that we have been given? That is the God who is the parent to us all. Thanks be to God.

I Kings 21:1-21a (NRSV)
Later the following events took place: Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of King Ahab of Samaria. And Ahab said to Naboth, "Give me your vineyard, so that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money."
But Naboth said to Ahab, "The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance."
Ahab went home resentful and sullen because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, "I will not give you my ancestral inheritance." He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat.
His wife Jezebel came to him and said, "Why are you so depressed that you will not eat?"
He said to her, "Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, 'Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it'; but he answered, 'I will not give you my vineyard.' "
His wife Jezebel said to him, "Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite."
So she wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal; she sent the letters to the elders and the nobles who lived with Naboth in his city.
She wrote in the letters, "Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the head of the assembly; seat two scoundrels opposite him, and have them bring a charge against him, saying, 'You have cursed God and the king.' Then take him out, and stone him to death."
The men of his city, the elders and the nobles who lived in his city, did as Jezebel had sent word to them. Just as it was written in the letters that she had sent to them, they proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth at the head of the assembly. The two scoundrels came in and sat opposite him; and the scoundrels brought a charge against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, "Naboth cursed God and the king." So they took him outside the city, and stoned him to death. Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, "Naboth has been stoned; he is dead."
As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, "Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead."
As soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab set out to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.
Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. You shall say to him, "Thus says the LORD: Have you killed, and also taken possession?" You shall say to him, "Thus says the LORD: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood."
Ahab said to Elijah, "Have you found me, O my enemy?"
He answered, "I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the LORD, I will bring disaster on you"

Spontaneous Combustion

I think my folks were a little threatened when I found Jesus. Actually, they wouldn’t have put it that way. They were a little threatened when I found Charles and Margaret and Graeme and all the other folks I gave my Thursday nights to when I was in high school.

You see, I started to spend Thursdays at a socialization program for mentally retarded citizens in my junior year. But it wasn’t because I had to fulfill a requirement for school or because I was working on a merit badge. I went to Thursday nights because I had found Jesus or Jesus had found me. I had spent a week at a youth retreat in Staunton the summer before my junior year and working with a program very much like our ARC program here on the Shore I learned something I hadn’t known before – Jesus had new things for me to do. Following Jesus was more than personal fulfillment; it was discovering myself in serving the world. Jesus was waiting to meet me in new faces and new places.

It changed my life. I was on fire for Jesus in a way I hadn’t been before. I looked forward to Thursday nights. I got a little obsessed with Thursday nights. I had a T-shirt made that said “Thursday Night Fever” on it. And that’s what made my folks nervous. I was so into it that they began to suspect I was getting into trouble. They weren’t really threatened by Jesus but they were trying to understand what in the world happened to their son. I was too!

Have you noticed that when people have a life-transforming experience with Jesus that they often talk about ‘before’ and ‘after’ as if there’s almost no continuity between them? ‘I used to be that way but now I’m this way.’ I thought I knew what life was all about but now I know it’s something radically different. I once was lost but now I’m found. I was blind but now I see.

Following Jesus changes people. It turns them upside down or right side up. It gives them a passion for life. And even if we don’t share it because of where we are in life, we envy people who find new life in Jesus.

Do you think this true? In the people who are ‘lit up’ for Christ we see something that gives their life meaning and purpose and direction. They are living on a higher plane and experiencing a quality of existence we wish for ourselves.

Then again, sometimes our response to that is not so great. There’s the story of the young woman who goes to church one Sunday in a very staid, straight-laced church where everything is very proper and where you get looked at a little funny when you sit in the “wrong” pew. In the middle of the sermon she gets struck by the Spirit and she starts to shout out. She cries, “Amen.” And the people in front of her shift uncomfortably in their seats. A little later she feels the Spirit again and yells, “Praise the Lord.” The people in front of her turn around and give her the stare. A third time she says, “Hallelujah!”

This is too much. An usher comes up and tells her, “I’m sorry, Mam, but you’ll have to be quiet.”

She says, “I can’t help it, I’ve got religion.”

The usher says, “Well, you didn’t get it here!”

But in general I think I’m envious (even though it’s one of the seven deadlies)…I’m envious of those who feel possessed by the Spirit. I don’t want an ordinary life. I hear Jesus’ promise that he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. I want to experience that spontaneous combustion that leads us to live on the edge.

Paul felt it, too. “I can’t it explain it any other way except to say that Jesus revealed this good news to me himself.” The Apostle Paul was telling the Galatians how it was that he became a follower of Christ. “I want you to know,” he says, “that this is not some human invention. I didn’t just get indoctrinated by the disciples in Jerusalem and get sent out with some talking points. I didn’t get recruited by someone who promised me that I could make a good living as a motivational speaker. No, I had an encounter with Jesus and it changed everything.”

Paul goes on to then to talk about how much his life changed and I want you to listen because there are lessons here for us as well. Life Lessons for Those Consumed By Christ, you might call them.

What you need to know first is that Paul, before his meeting with Christ was…what’s the phrase I’m looking for?...a bad dude. He would not have said that about himself at the time. In fact, he thought he was very religious and he was. He seems to have grown up with some training in the Pharisaic tradition of Judaism. And he did well. “I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries,” he says. It was as if this religion thing was a competition and Paul was winning. He was good at it.

In his tradition, one sign that you were doing well was if you were a zealot. Paul tells us that he was one of those. “I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors than others were,” he tells us. Now when we think of the word ‘zealot’, (if we think of the word ‘zealot’), we think of someone who has a mindless commitment to the cause. Someone who is so driven that they will do anything to prove their devotion.

There’s good reason for that. The word ‘zealot’ in the Bible refers to people who do just what I’ve described in pursuing a cause. We think of Simon the Zealot, one of the disciples, who was evidently associated with the cause of overthrowing Roman control over Israel and reestablishing Jewish rule. These zealots resorted to any means necessary from refusing to pay taxes to assassinating foreigners to revolution. In the same way, characters in the Hebrew Scriptures are praised for their zeal in purifying their community from those they considered unfaithful. Usually they express this zeal in violent ways. Phineas, who is praised for his zeal in the apocryphal book of 4 Maccabees [8:12], gained his stature by taking a spear and thrusting it right through an Israelite and his foreign wife, whom he had taken in defiance of Moses’ command.

What I’m saying is that zeal, and being zealous, has a violent connotation in the old ways of the Israelites. And Paul shares with the Galatians that he continued in this understanding because: How did he show his zeal for God? He persecuted the new Christian church, approving the stoning and killing of its members and trying to destroy it. In fact, that was the mission he was on when he had his conversion experience.

But he did have that conversion experience. He did have that moment on the road to Damascus when he was thrown from his mount onto the ground. He did see a bright light and hear Jesus’ voice saying, “Saul, Saul,” (for that was his name at the time), “Saul, why do you persecute me?” It was a moment when everything changed for him.

So here he is trying to explain to the Galatians what happened to him and he says, “What really changed was not that I was taken from one course and put onto another one. God set me apart before I was born, just like Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, and Samuel, and all those prophets God chose. I just finally got on track. God set me apart before I was born and God called me through grace and showed me Jesus so that I could proclaim him to the nations.” Actually what Galatians says in the New Revised Standard translation in verse 16 is that that God was pleased “to reveal his Son to me.” But the Greek is a little more ambiguous than that. It could be that God revealed Jesus to Paul, but it could also read that God revealed Jesus in Paul. Both seem just as accurate to me. It wasn’t just that Paul received a vision and then changed; Paul was changed by having Jesus revealed in him. He became Jesus to the others that he met. And all those things that he was before he was consumed by Christ are transformed.

Here’s where those Life Lessons come in. Before, Paul thought that being religious meant that he was in a competition with others in the faith. Now he recognizes that there’s a new order, a new ethic, a new community. He rejects competitiveness with other Christians and it is hard for him, because he’s a proud guy. He fights a battle with himself over the temptation to boast. And he’s faced with other traveling preachers who are seeking to tear him down. But he insists that it’s not about him anymore. He would agree with the words of 1 Peter where Christians are advised, “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever.” [1 Peter 4:11].

Instead of competitiveness, Jesus leaves us with new networks of connectedness and mutual support. We are related to one another. And this is a lesson we forget, especially in our society. When I can sit at home and access anything I want on the Internet, why do I need to interact with other? Why do I need Church when there is religion all over the internet and TV and radio? And yet, what are people doing on the Internet? They are seeking to create new communities. Facebook, MySpace – these social networking sites are all about trying to build new networks of connection. Community is not optional, it is at the heart of who we are and it is one of our deepest desires.

When all of us Methodists head off to Roanoke this afternoon we will be making a witness just by gathering together. We will be saying that Jesus did not call us alone, but Jesus called us to be part of a body. We are the body of Christ. That’s why we do this strange thing of coming together for worship. It’s why we meet together in small groups for prayer and mutual support. It’s why we eat together, as we will do next week. It’s why we have conferences. It’s why you can no more become a better Christian by remaining alone than you can turn a better double play in baseball by practicing alone. Life Lesson #1 – Being on fire for Jesus means being connected with Jesus’ body.

Lesson #2 – Zeal is not about violence, it’s about service. What Paul learns is that the violence that characterized his earlier life did not reflect the new life he knows in Christ. He could have just become a Christian version of his old self, persecuting those he felt didn’t represent his new understanding of the faith. Now, it’s true, that he probably didn’t have that opportunity since Christians were often on the margins of the community. But as a Christian he knew that he had to have a new way of being with sinners, of being with those who needed to hear God’s message of love and justice. The gospel of John tells us that God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. [John 3:17] If Jesus’ story tells us anything it tells us that God does not write us off or give up on us. God does have a concern for justice and for the righting of wrongs. God cannot abide evil and sin. They are foreign to God’s intentions for the world, but God handles this, not by condemning us, but by saving us through the means of the cross. What God asks from us is that we believe and live out of the freedom of new life.

Part of that new life is defending the defenseless and seeking out the lost and making space for the stranger in our midst. This is why Paul’s mission is so radical. He sought out those that he previously would have condemned. He went to people who were considered outcast or unclean. He did not seek to use violence, but revealed his zeal by doing good. He tells the Corinthians, “If you are zealous for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them by building up the church.” [1 Co. 14:12] This is a man who has changed.

Finally, Life Lesson #3 – If we are really going to show the world who Jesus is we need zeal, a fire that seeks to be Christ for others. Being on fire for Christ does not mean being turned in on ourselves. It means being turned outward, offering ourselves to the world. The bishops of our church and the general boards and agencies of our church have put together four Provocative Propositions for The United Methodist Church in the coming years. They deal with things like developing leadership, beginning new churches, tackling poverty and global health. But the basis for the propositions is the conviction that it is a Wesleyan thing, a Methodist thing, “to reach souls for Christ and to make disciples to transform the world.”[i] It’s not just that we are to reach souls, we are to make disciples who can then transform the world.


So here we are. Do we have the fire? Do we have the zeal? Will we be consumed by a fire that does not burn us up, but which leaves us burning like that bush Moses met on the mountaintop – burning by not burned up? Will we be made not less than we are, but more? More of who we are because that’s how we were made – we were people set apart by God before our birth? More of who we are because of who we are claimed by – by Jesus who is revealed to us and who longs to be revealed in us? Is that the fire that we have? Is that the desire we have? Do you want to live on the edge? Do you want to be the person you were always meant to be? Do you want to change the world?

Because that’s what God wants to do on this little sliver of land on the edge of the world. God wants to change the world. God wants people who seek God, who reveal Christ, who are possessed by the Spirit, and who want to live in the world and with the world so that the world and all that is in it can be transformed. And what better place for that to start than the Eastern Shore? We have things to do my brothers and sisters. Thanks be to God.

Galatians 1:11-24 (NRSV)
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God because of me.

[i] “Provocative Propositions,” p. 7, http://www.umc.org/atf/cf/%7BDB6A45E4-C446-4248-82C8-E131B6424741%7D/Provocative%20Propositions10%2020%2007.pdf

The Things That Are To Come

What do you do when the world is falling apart all around you? What do you do when all the things in which you had placed your trust become unreliable? What do you do when it seems like God has abandoned the field, abandoned your nation, abandoned you? What do you do when you are afraid of the things that are to come?

Patricius must have felt like that. At the age of sixteen his whole world was torn apart. It was the early 5th century in Britain. Rome, which had been ruling much of the land for almost 400 years, was beginning to crumble and to withdraw its forces to face threats closer to home. Before the century was over the empire would fall and all the lands that had adopted Roman culture and the new faith of the empire, Christianity, would be thrown into chaos.

Patricius was a child of the empire. His father was a deacon, his grandfather a priest in the church. But as the Roman garrisons were preparing to leave northern Britain, where Patricius lived, a terrible thing happened. The Irish came. Raiders attacked his town, took him from his family, and brought him to be a slave in Ireland, which was a wild, pagan land at the time that the Romans had never managed to conquer. Patricius found himself as a slave shepherd, watching sheep in a foreign land where he did not know the language and where slaves were treated cruelly.

It must have seemed like the end for Patricius. He was ripped from the world that he knew and that world was falling apart anyway. The future seemed to belong, not to Christ and to the Christian God, but to other gods and other powers. Was there anything new for God to say in the midst of this?

Six years Patricius served his pagan master. The boy grew into a young man. But a funny thing happened – he started to listen for God. He had never been very religious before. Didn’t really believe in God. Thought priests were foolish. But on those hillsides watching the sheep, he began to pray. “Tending flocks was my daily work,” he said, “and I would pray constantly during the daylight hours. The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more—and faith grew and the Spirit was roused…I would wake and pray before daybreak—through snow, frost, rain—nor was there any sluggishness in me…because then the Spirit within me was ardent.”[i]

In a world where everything else seemed dead, the Spirit was still alive, still burning within him. Then he had a dream. One night he had a dream in which a voice called out to him, “Your hungers are rewarded; you are going home.” Patricius sat right up, wide awake. But the voice continued, “Look, your ship is ready.”[ii]

He left that night, traveling over two hundred miles to the coast. He didn’t know what ship was waiting, but he believed that there would be one. And there was. A group of sailors carrying a load of Irish wolfhounds was ready to set off to sea. They found him out as a runaway slave, but they accepted him on board anyway and sailed off for what is now France.

The sailors were not Christians. In fact, they were somewhat like the sailors that took on Jonah when he was running away from God. They questioned Patricius’ faith. When they landed on the continent they found that it had been devastated, probably by invading Germanic tribes. The whole civilized world was being burned up. And there was not even any food to eat. The sailors, traveling inland, began to get hungry.

“How about it, Christian?” the captain said to Patricius. “You say your god is great and all-powerful, so why can’t you pray for us? We’re starving to death, and there’s little chance of our ever seeing another living soul!”

Patricius had not lost his faith. “Trust in God,” he tells the captain. “Nothing is impossible for God. And today he will send you food for your journey until you are filled, for he has abundance everywhere.” When the sailors who traveled with Jonah discovered that he served the God of wind and waves, they prayed to that God and were delivered (after they chucked Jonah overboard as whale bait). When these sailors hear this runaway talk about the same God, they pray as well and as their heads are bowed a herd of pigs heads right toward them. Dinner had arrived.

Patricius eventually ends up back home in Britain where he is reunited with his family. It could have been the happy ending to his story, but the young man cannot rest. He knows God has something more for him to do. Then he has another vision. This time he hears many voices – Irish voices – calling him, “We beg you to come and walk among us once more.”[iii] Craziness. Why would he go back to the people who had enslaved him, who mocked his faith, who were living on the edge of the world?

But Patricius was convicted, compelled, catapulted back to Ireland. After studying to become a priest he was ordained as a missionary. And he went back to the Irish, adopted them as his own people, brought them a new message, the old gospel of Christ, and they listened. You know him now as Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.

That’s an old, old story. You might say, “What’s the point of it? What do we have to learn from Patrick?” But is his world really so much different from our own? The world is changing, shifting beneath our feet. It’s a world of new ideas, new hostilities, and many, many people who have either abandoned the god of their parents or who have not heard the word they need to hear.

Patrick’s story is really the story of every generation. What do we do with this old story of Jesus in a new world? Or to use the words that the people of Israel used when they were in exile in Babylon, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” [Psalm 137:4]

It’s something the disciples faced as they moved on from the crucifixion and the resurrection. With Jesus now no longer physically present among them, they started to ask a lot of questions: To whom shall we turn? Shall we go on? What are we to do? How would Jesus want us to behave, to act? What was it that Jesus said about this problem? This was the situation Jesus was preparing them for in the gospel passage we read this morning.

But we haven’t stopped asking this basic question. The church is continually struggling with this question. What’s new? What are we to do? Where are we going? Part of the searching we are doing as the small groups in our church have been reading this book, The Myth of the 200 Barrier, is that we are asking that question of Franktown Church. Who are we now? We have come a long, long way. We celebrate all that we’ve become. We give thanks for the community that we have become. For the mission work that is ongoing. For the youth who are so active and doing so many creative things. For the new members who are enriching our life and bring so many gifts. For the music ministry. Building on that we are optimistic about the future, but we also ask, “What would Jesus want us to do? Where would Jesus have us go? What is the new thing that we are being called to?”

In our personal lives we know that struggle as well, especially when things are difficult. When our old certainties are shaken because of a death or an illness…when our plans that we have so carefully crafted have to be thrown out of the window by a child in trouble or a job that ends…when our marriages struggle and sputter…when I’ve reached the end of my rope…the end of my faith…what now, God? What now, Jesus? Where do I go from here?

You remember Patrick sitting on the hillside, praying? The thing that stayed alive in him, which told him where to go, was that ardent flame of the Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus is talking about in this passage from John where he is trying to get the disciples to understand what their future life will be like. “I won’t be here,” he says, “but I am not leaving you alone. I will send the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. You won’t see me, but you will not be abandoned. The Spirit is my continuing presence with you. Just like you have known the God of the universe through me, so you will remember me through the work of the Holy Spirit.

“I can’t tell you all that you need to know right now. You couldn’t bear it. Just like a child would not be able to comprehend all that she needs to know about adulthood at the age of 9. You will get what you need at the time that you need it. The Spirit will lead you into truth. The Spirit will ground you in my presence. The Spirit will tell you all the things that are to come.”

What a wonderful vision. We might think of the Holy Spirit as a kind of spooky thing, especially if we grew up calling it the Holy Ghost. But the Spirit is not something to replace Jesus – its role is to sweep us up into the life of the Trinity, to make us part of God’s plans and intentions for the reconciliation of the world, to give us a fresh interpretation of the Word for a new time and place. The Spirit lets us sing in a strange land.

The main thing that the Spirit does is to remind us of the abundance and beauty of life and to make us truly alive. Remember that saying from Patrick to the sailors, “Pray and God will send you food for your journey until you are filled, for he has abundance everywhere.” There is not a place on the earth that is not filled with the presence of God. There is not a dark valley we can travel that has not already been traveled by Christ. There is not a situation we can face that is resistant to the workings of God’s Spirit.

The Irish poet Joseph Plunkett writes of this continuing presence of Christ in a beautiful poem:
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.[iv]

That’s a very Celtic way of looking at the world – as filled with reminders of the central message of our faith. Everything gives testimony to what God has done in Christ and to what God is still doing with us.

So what about these visions? We have been talking about them for several weeks now in the aftermath of Easter. Peter has a vision in a sailcloth and the disciples understand that a wall between Jews and Gentiles has come down. Paul has a vision of a man in Macedonia asking him to come across the waters and the mission to Europe begins. Patrick has a vision of the Irish people calling to him and he drops his comfortable life to return to the land where he was enslaved. How do we know when a vision is from God?

We test it. We ask if it is faithful to the message that we know in Jesus Christ. We share it with the congregation of the faithful and ask if what we are hearing seems consistent with God is doing in Jesus. God did not stop speaking when Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead. All that needed to happen to ensure our salvation happened in that act, but it was not the end of the story. There is more for us to do and there is more for the Spirit to reveal to us. We are inheritors of the Pentecost promise that tells us that, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” [Acts 2:17] We’re going to have visions. We’re going to dream dreams. The Holy Spirit will come. The heavens will ring with the glory of God. The earth will shout forth its praise. The poor shall have good news proclaimed to them. The lowly will be lifted up and the rich sent empty away. The thirsty shall be satisfied and the hungry? Well, for them pigs will come stampeding toward them.

Brian McLaren tells the story of a zoo in Mombasa, Kenya. When the tsunami struck a couple of years ago, it affected places a long ways from Indonesia, where it did the most damage. In Kenya, it swept up a river and one of the things it did was to take a baby hippo and its mother and suck them out to sea. The mother hippo died but the baby survived and was found wandering around on the beach, far from its native habitat.

The people who found the baby hippo didn’t know what to do with it. After all, you don’t just take a baby hippo home with you. So they contacted the zoo and said, “Do you have space for a hippo?”

Well, the zoo didn’t have any good open space but they had a room with a big Seychelles Island tortoise in it. A 100-year-old tortoise. So they thought, “The tortoise doesn’t move around much, he won’t be bothered by the hippo.” And that’s where they put the hippo.

An interesting thing happened, though. The hippo bonded to the tortoise. It started treating it like its mother. The tortoise was not too happy about this. He didn’t really want to adopt a 300-lb baby hippo. But the hippo kept bounding over to the tortoise and the tortoise would run away at top speed. Which wasn’t very fast.

But eventually the hippo won out. The tortoise stopped running away and soon it was clear that the tortoise and the hippo both preferred the others company to being alone. You’d go by the room at the zoo where they lived and they’d be snuggled up together sleeping.

McLaren sees that as an image for the church and the world. The tortoise is like the church which has forgotten what it’s like to care for others and to be concerned about their welfare. The hippo is the orphaned world in which we live. There are so many ways that the world and the people in it are like orphaned children, looking for guidance and direction and love and willing to seek it if only we would turn to them.[v] There are a lot of orphans to care for. Children’s Hope Chest and the orphans we support through it in Russia are only some of them.

But here’s the good news: God is not going to let chaos and destruction have the last word. God is not going to let a dead end be the end of the road. God is not going to abandon you or the world. God is not going to leave you alone or the world alone. God has the ultimate “no child left behind” policy. God will pursue you like a baby hippo until you see the wonders prepared for you since the foundation of the world. But it’s best you see those on this side of the grave. Because this is the realm in which we are given the opportunity to respond to God’s love. This is the time and the space in which we are given the opportunity to act on God’s grace. This is the life that is meant to be life and not a preparation for eternal death. And what does this except the love of Jesus Christ? What allows us to live except the power of the Holy Spirit? What saves us except the God who is turning the world right side up?

I don’t know what your life looks like today. Maybe it looks like a dead end to you. Maybe you’ve lost touch with the things that give you happiness and strength and life. Maybe you’re in a difficult relationship or a hard spot. But God has not lost touch with you or with this church or with this world. The abundance we seek is all around us. And this bread and cup we are about to share is not just a memorial to what happened long ago. It is also a message, like the one given to us through the Holy Spirit, of the things that are to come. Thanks be to God.

John 16:12-15
There is still much I have to tell you, but you are not able to bear it right now. But when that one, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will lead you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself, but rather he will speak what he has heard and will announce to you the things that are to come. That One will glorify me because he will receive from me and announce it to you. All that the Father has is mine. Because of this I said, "He will receive from me and announce it to you."

[i] From St. Patrick’s Confession, recorded in Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, (Doubleday: New York, 1995), p. 102.
[ii] Ibid., pp. 102-3.
[iii] ibid., p. 105.
[iv] Ibid., pp. 132-33.
[v] Brian McLaren, “Hope and Obstacles,” The opening presentation from the Mainline Emergent Conference, January 30, 2007, Columbia Seminary, Atlanta, GA