The Pause that Refreshes

It is important that we perceive reality correctly. The story is told of a police detective who was training three recruits. He held up a picture of a suspect and asked the first recruit how he would recognize the man if he saw him on the street. “That’s easy,” the first recruit said. “I’d look for a man with only one eye.”

The training detective got very agitated. “No, no, no. This is a profile shot. Obviously this man has another eye.” So he turns to the second recruit and says, “You’re bound to do better. How would you recognize this man on the street?”

“That’s easy,” the second recruit said. “A guy with only one ear should be easy to spot.”

“No, no. It’s a profile shot. Don’t you understand what that means?” The police detective turned to the last recruit. “Are you as dense as the others? How would you recognize this suspect?”

“Well,” the third recruit said. “I’d look for a guy wearing contact lenses.”

The police detective thought this was pretty strange. He went back to the file on the suspect and, sure enough, he did wear contact lenses. He went to the recruit and said, “You’re right. How did you know that?”

“Well,” the recruit said. “A guy with only one eye and one ear couldn’t wear regular glasses.”

It is important that we perceive reality correctly. But what I want to say to you today is that it is very easy to be deceived about who we are. It is very easy to push the truth away. And it is a gift beyond measure when someone can speak the truth about who we are to us. That is the gift that Jesus offers us. Jesus can speak the truth to us about who we are and when you can see the truth, you can really live.

My preaching professor in seminary was named Zan Holmes and he used to tell the story about his dog. Brownie. Now he lived in a house with a very small backyard and they used to keep Brownie on a chain tied to a pole in the middle of the yard. And every afternoon when Zan came home from work he’d go to his backdoor and yell out to the dog. And when Brownie saw Zan she had a little routine. The dog would run out to the length of that chain and when it pulled her tight she’d start running around the yard in a circle at the length of the chain. That’s how she showed her excitement when anybody in the family came out to see her. And she had done this so much that she wore a path in a circle at the length of that chain.

Well, one day, Zan says, he came home and somebody had forgotten to chain Brownie to the pole. And when he came to the door he stood there and yelled out to the dog and she came running towards him…until she got to the point where the chain usually stopped her. And then, even without the chain, she started to run in a circle on that same tired path she had worn. Brownie was free, but she didn’t know it. So she kept on running in a circle. If Brownie had been able to see the truth about herself and her situation, she could really begin to live.

Anybody want to raise your hand if you’ve got some tired circles you’re running in? I’ve got them. There are lots of old habits and bad tapes running in our heads. There are lots of ways we tell ourselves lies about what’s really going on. Lies about who we are and about what the world is like. Let me tell you, the world is full of lies.

Jesus knew something about this. Jesus knew that we human beings are capable of telling all kinds of lies about ourselves and of living with all kinds of walls we didn’t need to construct. We don’t know the truth; we can’t see the truth, and so we don’t know how to really live.

Did you hear this story from the gospels today? It’s a wild story. Jesus is traveling through Samaria with his disciples. Now that doesn’t sound strange to us and it wasn’t strange for Jews to pass through Samaria on their way between Jerusalem and Galilee, but we don’t hear it in the same way unless we make ourselves listen differently.

Jesus and his disciples were Jews and Jews and Samaritans did not get along. The Jews thought of the Samaritans as a corrupted people because they had intermarried with foreigners. They wouldn’t share the same drinking or eating vessels. Samaritan women were considered ritually unclean and so Jewish men made an extra effort not to touch or be touched by them. Jews and Samaritans claimed the same God but each thought the others were heretics who worshipped in the wrong place and the wrong way. Jews and Samaritans were related but there was very bad blood between them, which makes this story pretty unusual.

So anyway, Jesus sends the disciples on into a village to get some food and he stops by a well, which just happens to be the well used by his ancestor Jacob. Jacob was an ancestor for the Jews and the Samaritans and the well was named for him, even though Jacob probably never drew water from the well. That would have been a job for Rachel or Leah, his wives. Back in the day, that’s who drew the water…the women. It’s not a great job, either. The well is not convenient. It’s outside of town. You have to carry a large earthenware jar and probably put it on your head to carry it back. It’s a hot job and it has to be done every day whether you feel like it or not because you just can’t live without water. And so the women got the job. No, it wasn’t fair. But those were the times.

So Jesus is sitting there by the well alone when a Samaritan woman comes to draw water. She comes in the middle of the day, which is not when the rest of the women come. This woman is isolated from the rest of the women. She comes when she knows she won’t have to be with them.
Now as a Jew and as a man this is where Jesus should have moved away or where the woman should have moved away, but neither one of them plays the game that was expected of them. They’re going to play another game.

Jesus says to this woman, “Give me something to drink.”

She recognizes that he’s breaking the rules by asking her to do this, so she calls him on it. She says, “You’re a Jew! You’re asking me, a Samaritan woman, to give you something to drink?” That sounds like a “No, get your own water” to me.

But Jesus wants to get her into a conversation so he says, “If you knew the gift of God and if you knew who was asking you for water, you’d ask him and he would give you living water.” Well, this is the invitation to a game. The woman begins to suspect that this conversation might not be about the well anymore. What Jesus is saying is, “Let’s have a conversation and this is how the game will work. I ask you for water and you respond by asking me for living water.”

This woman decides that she will play the game and she starts by teasing Jesus. “You know, that well’s pretty deep,” she says. “You don’t have a bucket,” she says. “It’s going to be awfully hard for you to give me living water. Are you a better man than Jacob who dug this well?”

Jesus probably smiled then, but then he said, “Everybody who drinks this water is going to get thirsty again. This water I’m talking about becomes a fountain in the person who receives it and they will never be thirsty again.”

Well, you know this sounds pretty good to the woman. No more thirst. No more trips to the well. She probably forgot for a minute that Jesus was talking about something besides the water in the well because she says, “O.K., give me this water.”

Now Jesus turns the tables on her. He says, “Go away, tell your husband, and come back.” It’s almost like he’s saying he doesn’t want to play this little game anymore. If he was really concerned about the appropriate way to talk to her, he would have called her husband in the first place. If Jesus was going to have any contact with this woman, it should have been through her husband. But he’s not trying to end this conversation. He’s not trying to change the rules. He wants to start talking about the truth. He’s not going to talk about the well anymore. He wants to talk about her.

She’s ready. She admits right up front, “I don’t have a husband.” That the truth. She seems to be living with a man and seems to have had relationships in the past with men who were not husbands but she’s not going to hide this from Jesus. In fact, Jesus seems to know all about her. He praises her for telling the truth.

When it’s clear who she is, she wants to get clear about who Jesus is, so she starts asking the questions. She asks him if he is a prophet and asks him about religious questions and asks him if he is the Messiah and then Jesus tells her what he has not told anybody else to this point. When the woman asks, “Are you the Messiah, the Christ, the one we’ve been waiting for?” He says, “I am. The one speaking to you. I am.”

When Jesus says this the disciples walk up and maybe they heard what he said, but they couldn’t listen to it right then because they were so disturbed by what they were seeing. Jesus was talking with a woman, a Samaritan woman? There may have been truth in the air, but they couldn’t hear it. But the woman knew. And she left her water jug behind and ran into the city. Now that she had seen the truth, she was ready to really live.

That’s a strange story. It really is. The conversation that Jesus and the woman have is really strange but, in the course of the conversation, truth is told. The woman finds a person who can tell her and help her admit who she truly is. And the woman sees Jesus for who he truly is. The truth is told. The woman is a person looking for living water and Jesus has come to tell the good news that the living water is here.

Do you know what it’s like to live with a lot of lies? Do you know what it’s like to be told over and over who you are? Some people live with some very hurtful things that others tell them or that they tell themselves. Have you ever been called worthless, hopeless, irredeemable, incapable, incorrigible, incompetent or incurable? Have you ever thought of yourself as valueless, insignificant, useless, or used up?

I’m here to tell you tonight, in the name of the Jesus who sat by that well with the Samaritan woman, that all of those words are lies. The truth about us, about any of us, is that we do fall and we do fail. We do mess up and we do sin. But it is not true, for all that, that we are condemned. It is not true that we are beyond God’s reach, beyond God’s touch, beyond God’s love. It is not true that Jesus will pass you by.

It IS true that Jesus will come and sit by the well with you. It IS true that Jesus will stand by you. It IS true that Jesus will transform you. And whatever lies the world may throw at you then…whatever sick thoughts continue to plague you then...whatever lingering wounds continue to fester, you can then say, “Lies, you have no power over me anymore. I was lost but now I’m found. I was sick but now I’m healed. I was dead but now I’m alive because I know the truth about the world and about me. I know that God did not come to condemn the world and to condemn me, but God came to save the world and save me. God is not standing over me waiting for me to fall. God is standing WITH me helping me to get back on my feet.”

We United Methodists talk a lot about grace, you know. Grace is God’s love freely given to all God’s children and there is no way to put yourself outside of God’s grace. When you wake up in the morning, God’s grace is there. When you hurt your neighbor, God’s grace is there. When you sink into despair, God’s grace is there. What you need to realize is that God is not waiting for something to happen so that God can accept you. God is expecting something to happen because God has already accepted you. When you see the truth, then you can really live.

One more story. You know the story of Harriet Tubman? Harriet Tubman was born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the early 1800s. She escaped slavery and went to live in the north, but she kept coming back. She kept coming back to the South because she knew there were people there who needed to be free.

On dark nights she would bring them across into freedom. And when she did it she would carry a big rifle along with her. She never fired it, but she used it to remind the slaves that there was no going back. Once they realized they could be free, there was no going back to what they had been before. Once they knew the truth about who they could be--free people, she was not going to let them go back to being slaves.

Harriet Tubman said, "I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
The first step in getting free is to realize that you are a slave, that you need something beyond yourself to get free. To get free you have to admit the truth, and the truth is that God is waiting with living water to baptize you into a new life. Jesus is waiting by the well. It’s time to tell some truth. Whatever you have been, you don’t have to be any longer. Because the truth is that you are a child of God. Thanks be to God.

John 4:7-14
A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me something to drink.” For his disciples had entered the city in order to buy food.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask from me, a Samaritan woman, something to drink?” For the Jews did not have dealings with the Samaritans.Jesus answered, saying to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is the one saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink,’ you would ask him and he would give you living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not have a bucket and the well is deep. Where, then, do you have the living water? You aren’t more prominent than our ancestor Jacob, are you, who gave us this well and who himself drank from it along with his children and animals?”

Jesus answered, saying to her, “Everyone who drink from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water which I shall give to them will not be thirsty ever again. Rather the water which I will give them will become in them a fountain of water spring up into eternal life.”

Then the woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water in order that may not thirst nor come here to draw.”
He said to her, “Go away, call your husband, and come back here.”

The woman answered, saying to him, “I do not have a husband.”

Jesus said to her, “It is well that you say, ‘I do not have a husband,’ for the five men you have had and the one you now have are not your husband. This you have said is true.”

The woman said to him, “Lord, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship.”

Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, that the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know; for salvation is from the Jews; but the hours is coming and now is when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah comes, the one called Christ. When he comes, he will disclose all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one speaking to you.”

Then I Saw His Face (Now I'm a Believer)

Things change. Have you noticed? The other day I was looking at some photos of what Cape Charles looked like in its heyday back in the 1920s. One of the pictures showed the dock and it was just full of barrels and barrels of potatoes and cabbage waiting to be shipped out on steamers. Another photo showed this huge brick building that was the Cape Charles railroad station. It was right there alongside the harbor and it was a place where a lot of produce came in and was loaded onto boats. It was also a big passenger hub as people came down the Shore on the train to catch the steamer across the bay. Cape Charles was a different kind of place in those days. There were a lot more people on the Shore then. There was no Bay-Bridge Tunnel. People got around differently.

Things change. Back in the day, church was a different kind of place, too. If you had come to Franktown Church a hundred years ago you would recognize some things. This sanctuary would have been smaller, but the windows and the wood are still the same. Some of the songs we sing in the hymnal are still the same. But it would have felt like a much more stable community. The families that were here had been here for many years. They saw the church as part of the fabric of their lives and would not have questioned its role. The people you saw here were the people you saw every day. There’s still some of that, and it’s one of the things I love about this church, but it’s not the same. Things change.

We are living in a time when institutions are falling out of favor. You can see it in our elections this year. What’s the big word that everybody’s talking about? Change. We don’t trust our government and its capacity to do the things we want it to do. We don’t trust our economic system. The old-line corporations that seemed like they would never go away, companies like GM, are in trouble. Our schools are in trouble and mandatory testing is not fixing the problem. Our families are in trouble and the effects are everywhere. It’s a rough season for institutions and the church is not immune.

Here’s my word for the day, though: People may be frustrated with the church, but they have not stopped seeking what it is that the church says it is about. People…we are still looking for belonging, are still looking for direction, are still looking for wisdom, are still looking for spiritual meaning, are still looking for healing, are still looking for transcendence…we are still looking for Jesus and if the church does not help people to see Jesus, then it should close its doors or be converted into a funky, artsy restaurant. There are too many important things going on in the world for the church not to be about the most important thing. But if we really believe what we say, that Jesus…not any institution, but Jesus…if Jesus transforms the world, then where else could we be right now than here, trying to see Jesus again for the first time.

Nicodemus was a seeker and he came to Jesus in the middle of the night. He was a Pharisee, and the way the Bible tells the story of the Pharisees you’re supposed to ‘boo’ when you hear that bit of information. Even though the Pharisees were part of a complex movement that was trying to bring about religious renewal to Israel, the gospels don’t have a lot of good to say about them. They represented the institution…the ‘man.’ They were a rigid group that had strict interpretations of how things should be.

Nicodemus was part of that group. He was supposed to have the answers. So it’s a big surprise when he shows up in the middle of the night to see Jesus, who was causing a stir in Jerusalem by doing things like overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and driving out the animals being sold for sacrifices with a whip. You might say he was considered a dangerous radical after that. It would have been politically incorrect for a Pharisee to show up to talk to Jesus after that. But here he is…wondering about this man who did wonders…seeking out this man who seemed to know something he didn’t. So he shows up under cover of darkness.

“Rabbi,” he calls him. An honorific title. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God because nobody could do the signs you are doing unless God were with him.” Nicodemus suspects that God is at work here, but he has no way of knowing who Jesus really is. It’s going to make the conversation they have very awkward because Jesus is going to talk to him as the person he knows he is. Nicodemus is going to struggle to keep up.

“I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born from above that one will not be able to see the kingdom of God.” It’s a funny word that Jesus uses here. “Born from above” is what he says but the Greek word here is anothen and it can refer to space or time. You can be born from above – that’s the spatial reference… it’s used again when the temple curtain is torn in two when Jesus dies on the cross – it was torn “from the top” to the bottom – but the word can also mean “born all over again.” That’s a time reference. To be born anothen could mean to be totally remade from the very beginning. This is where we get the phrase “born again” from.

We don’t know which of these Jesus meant, but what Nicodemus hears is the time reference and he has a pretty literal mind so he asks the question, “How can this be? Can a person be born all over again? Can they go back into the womb a second time and be born?”

So Jesus tries again. He tries to get Nicodemus to see that he’s not talking about a literal birth, but a spiritual rebirth. “I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born of water and the spirit, that person cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

A couple of things to note here. The first is: Do you see what Jesus is interested in? Why does a person have to be born from above? In order to see the kingdom of God. Why does a person have to be born of water and the spirit? To enter the kingdom of God. This is what Thomas Wynn was talking about a few weeks ago when he was here, what Jesus is interested in is not the institution of the church but the spiritual reality of the kingdom of God. It’s the kingdom Jesus wants to get us to. And if people are not seeing the kingdom on earth then every institution, including the church, is not worth their while.

The second thing to notice is this: Being born from above or born all over again has something to do with water and wind. We are people of the water. We Eastern Shore people are people of the water in a lot of ways, but as Christians we are people of the water of baptism. To be born of the water means to be entering the new reality of life in Christ – to be washed clean from sin and to be part of God’s new reality.

We are also people of the wind. We Eastern Shore people know something about wind, too. But what did Jesus mean when he talked about the wind? You might be saying, “Wait, a minute. Jesus said, ‘Unless you are born of water and the Spirit…’ There was nothing about wind there. But the Greek word that is used there means spirit or wind. Whenever we talk about the Spirit you should hear the sound of wind because the word is the same.

It was wind blowing across the dark waters in the opening chapters of Genesis – a wind that was God’s Spirit. It was wind that blew back the waters of the Red Sea so that the people of Israel could walk out of slavery in Egypt on dry land – a wind that was God’s Spirit. It was the sound of a violent windstorm that filled the room at Pentecost and scattered those huddled disciples throughout the earth in Jesus’ name. Wind is what makes us a people of mystery and wonder.

Jesus knows this and he tells Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.” The King James Version is particularly beautiful here, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” If I were to paraphrase Jesus here, I would say that he is telling Nicodemus, “Nick, you’re trying to get it all nailed down and this wind that is blowing is not going to allow anything to be nailed down. You think you know how it all works, but listen to that sound – it’s the wind, it’s the Spirit, it’s the new life that you need and that the whole world needs. Things are not going to be the same. You came for wonders but there are more wonders than you can ever imagine. If you want to move with God you’ve got to set sail. You’ve got to be a creature of the water and the wind.”

Nicodemus still didn’t get it. He’s still asking the same question after Jesus says this. “How can this be?”

So now Jesus gives him the anchor that he needs. It’s about water. It’s about wind. It’s about being born from above and born all over again. But it’s also about Jesus. There is an anchor for all of this esoteric language. There is a place where earth and heaven meet. There is a place where you can get a handle on what God is doing and that place is the cross of Jesus.

Jesus reminds Nicodemus, the learned biblical scholar, of a story that would have been familiar to him, though it’s not familiar to most of us. He remembers a story from the wilderness when the people were traveling toward the Promised Land after leaving Egypt. They were grumbling about the food and water and God sent a plague of poisonous snakes into the camp. People were bitten and people died. The people repented and they came to Moses and said, “We recognize that we have sinned against God. Pray that God will take away the snakes.”

So Moses did that and God told him what to do for a remedy. He was to make a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole so that when people were bitten by a snake they could look at the snake on the pole and be healed. They wouldn’t die from the poison because this pole was in the camp.

Jesus made the connection then to his own death. He tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up.” Of course, Nicodemus was confused. Of course he couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying. The cross was still in the future for him. But for us, it’s clear. Just as the serpent on the pole brought healing to those who had been infected with death, so this savior on the pole, the cross, would bring healing to the world. Because God’s desire was not that the people should perish but that they would live. God loved the world. God shows us that throughout the Bible. And in the same way that God loved the world, God sent the only begotten Son, so that…you can say it with me…whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

Isn’t that supposed to be the good news? Isn’t that supposed to be the thing that makes all the things that we do here worthwhile? Isn’t that the thing that gives us a reason for reaching out to the world? Isn’t that why we do Sunday School? Isn’t that why we build church buildings? Isn’t that why the world is a wondrous place? Because God loves this world and cares about it enough that God came to the world in Jesus to save it and save us.

I was talking with a woman the other day who said to me, “I’m very disappointed in the church right now. I just don’t see that it offers anything different from the other parts of the world that are also not working well. Sometimes I think my child would see more of the wonder of the world by looking at the stars with me than by going to sit in a church building and doing worksheets.”

Maybe we shouldn’t do church in the bright sunshine of Sunday morning. Maybe we should come in the middle of the night. Maybe we should be a little nervous about what Jesus might tell us. Maybe we should be a little frightened even. But I know that we should be expecting miracles. If we can’t bring our most holy selves here, our truest selves here…then we haven’t met the Jesus who is waiting to meet us in water and wind.

I know this sounds a little mystical. I know it sounds a little strange. But what does God want from us except everything we are. Thanks be to God.

John 3:1-17
Now there was a man from the Pharasaic group, Nicodemus by name, an authority among the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God because no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.”
Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, unless a person is born from above, that one will not be able to see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How is it possible for a person to be born when he is already old? It isn’t possible to enter into his mother’s womb a second time and be born, is it?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless a person is born of water and the Spirit, that one cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I say to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it will and you hear its voice but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. Just so are all those born of the wind.”
Nicodemus spoke up and said, “How can this be?”
Jesus answered back and said to him, “You are a teacher in Israel and you do not know these things? I tell you the truth, we speak what we know and we bear witness to what we see but you do not receive our witness. If I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Humanity, the One who is in heaven. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up, so that all who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For just as God loved the world, so he gave his only son, that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but rather that the world might be saved through him.”

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

graphic by Lena Watts

I’m starting a new sermon series today. I have this sense that’s there is someone I want you to meet during this season of Lent. There is someone I want to meet. And it’s not even as though you haven’t met him before. I’m talking about Jesus. I want you to meet Jesus. I want to meet Jesus.

Through these next six weeks as we head toward Holy Week and Easter we’re going to have a lot of opportunities to see Jesus from a lot of different angles. We’re going to be adding to our collection of Jesus pictures each week. The point is to give us a lot of different windows for seeing this person who is at the heart of who we are. As Christians, we all bear his name. But there is always more to learn from Jesus and always more of us that needs to be transformed by him. So I want to invite you to go on a Lenten journey with me to meet Jesus again for the first time.

Today I want to talk about Jesus and begin by talking about comedy. Comedy is built on the idea that the misfortunes of someone else, worked out in a play or a movie or a camp skit, can help us safely deal with our own sense that all is not right with the world or with us. I have to admit that I am a sucker for slapstick comedy. Joel calls me in to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos all the time because he knows something will have me rolling on the floor in no time. Somebody slips on a banana peel or gets hit in the head with a ball and we know we wouldn’t want it to happen to us because the person on screen or on stage looks so ridiculous, but we laugh…I laugh…because we know that we HAVE looked that ridiculous from time to time.

Situation comedies? They work because they take a situation which can seem overwhelming in real life and they can work it out with humor and perhaps a little truth telling. We laugh at situations like this because, even when they’re outlandish, they have a way of hitting close to home. We can do two things with the truth--we can laugh or we can cry.

Paul, who wrote the letter to Romans that we read earlier, had a way of speaking the uncomfortable truth about who we are. This letter starts out as a real downer. Paul sends his greetings along to the Christians in Rome, says that he wants to visit them there, and then, before he even gets around to asking about the weather, he launches into a long litany of how God’s wrath was going to poured out on all the people. He talks about idol worship, sexual immorality, greed, murder, malice, envy, gossiping, strife, disobeying parents…before the end you expect him to throw in being late in returning your library books! You can just imagine the Romans nodding their heads as he mentions the big sins…murder? O.K., I haven’t done that. Greed? Think I’m doing alright with that. Strife? Uh-oh. By the end no one could imagine that they had been good enough to escape God’s wrath.

That’s just the point for Paul. He himself had done many of the things he condemned and in his old life he had been the one who was charged with enforcing the Jewish law! Paul knew that none of the people he was writing to could hold themselves up as blameless in the face of this and he wanted to get their attention. The book starts by saying that if you think you’re good enough to be perfect by your own power, think again!

The problem is not new. It’s not new for us and it wasn’t new for the Roman Christians. We have known for millennia that something is not right with the world and that something is not right with our lives. When people strap on suicide bombs and blow themselves up in a crowded market, something is not right. When our children study how we overcame segregation in Virginia and see that it still exists in their lunchrooms and in the worlds their parents live in, something is not right. When we fail a friend, or neglect our bodies, or ignore the needs of our soul, or distract ourselves into thinking that being busy is an acceptable substitute for being right, in all of these cases, something is not right. When we think too much of ourselves or too little, something is not right.

Paul knew that. Paul knew that we live with a sneaking suspicion that damnation may be what we deserve. Paul knew that there are some things we just can’t seem to let go of no matter how hard we try. Sin is not just an option we can take or leave. It’s in our DNA.

The image Paul used to talk about this was the figure of Adam. “Sin, he said, “came into the world in the person of Adam.” (Eve gets off the hook in this retelling of the story, but that’s only fair since she has taken most of the blame in most of the other retellings). “And with sin came death and death has been with us ever since. Even when we didn’t know what sin was, because it’s only the law that brings the awareness of sin, even then it had its effect. It’s not transmitted by any means we can tell. But it is a part of all of our lives and when we sense that all is not right we know its effects.

“There was this person,” Paul says, “whose name was Adam, but there was also this person, whose name was Jesus and because of him all the terrors of God’s wrath that I talked about in chapter one are not our inheritance.” The good news in Paul’s bad news is that God has interrupted the cycle that leads from sin to death. The merry-go-round that we have all experienced that takes us right back to the same old pains, same old wounds, same old guilt, over and over, again and again, does not have to be the final word. That cycle only works if the thing that the universe runs on is God’s wrath, which determines that we are eternally guilty. There is a different force at work in the universe, Paul says. It’s more powerful. It’s love.

How do we know that it’s love that makes the world go ‘round? Because we’ve seen it. We’ve lived with it. We’ve touched it. We’ve watched it die with us and for us. The love that interrupts the merry-go-round, that shortchanges the wages of sin, that redeems us from our failures, that heals our wounds, that opens the door to new life, is the love we’ve known in Jesus. And God did not wait until we “got it” and lived up to our end of the love connection before coming to us. God did not wait until we proved ourselves worthy. While we were still sinners, Paul says, Christ came and died for us. You probably didn’t even notice it, but while we were living, God was reconciling us to God’s own self. When someone asks you when you were saved, you can say, “I remember it well. It was a Friday on a hill outside of Jerusalem.” When did God make the move toward us? Before we could ever imagine making the move toward God.

What Paul is saying is that the most powerful thing we have to say as Christians is the truth about ourselves and the world. But the truth is more than “Jesus Christ came and therefore we can ignore the hurts and pains and sin of this world.” The truth is deeper.

Which brings me back to comedy. Do you remember the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes? In Hans Christian Anderson’s telling, an emperor, who always insists on being seen in the finest clothes and with all of the greatest trappings of wealth and power, hires two tailors to outfit him with a brand new set of clothes. The tailors are really scoundrels who convince the emperor that they will make him a set of clothes that will seem invisible to all those who are too stupid or incompetent to appreciate its quality. Of course the emperor is intrigued and he gives the tailors two bags of gold to begin work.

The tailors come back with the invisible clothes and the emperor panics because he can’t see the cloth or feel it. But he doesn’t want to seem stupid or incompetent so he pretends that he does see it. And since the emperor has said that HE sees the cloth, all the people in his court also admire the non-existent clothes. They didn’t want to be thought of as stupid or incompetent either.

The people in the kingdom have heard of this marvelous cloth and they want to see it, so the emperor agrees to parade through the streets wearing his new clothes. A page followed behind holding the invisible train of his robe. All of the people along the way join in the delusion by complimenting the emperor’s choice of cloth and the splendor of his garments. But a little boy sees the ruler pass and says simply, “The emperor is naked.” His father shushes him but others hear him and know that he has spoken the truth. Soon everyone is saying, “The emperor has no clothes.” And the emperor went home very embarrassed indeed.

That is comedy. By telling the truth, the child had exposed the king and all his subjects for who they truly were and a dangerous fiction had been punctured. And the truth is about more than just the emperor. We recognize ourselves and the fictions we cling to in that story as well.

What Paul wants to tell us in Romans is high comedy. Paul wants to tell the truth, too. Paul wants to expose the lies by which we all live. Paul wants to tell us that the pretensions we live under are dangerous. Paul also wants to tell us that the despair we are prone to is also unfounded. Because if there is one thing truer than the fact that we are all sinners deserving of condemnation it is that we are loved by God and seen through the lens of Jesus Christ.

Why do we preachers talk so much about Jesus? It’s not just that Jesus is a good example. Yes, that’s true, but there are many good people whose lives we could imitate and what Jesus did in his life and death and resurrection was unique. “What would Jesus do?” may be a helpful question but it’s not the basic question. The basic question is “What IS Jesus doing?”

Jesus is reconciling the world to God. Jesus is healing the sick. Jesus is comforting the grieving. Jesus is walking with the weak. Jesus is empowering the poor. Jesus is lifting up the lonely. Jesus is challenging the rich. Jesus is confronting the hard-hearted. Jesus is raising the dead, welcoming the children, feeding the hungry. Jesus is opening the door to a new realm and a new reign where death has lost its sting and sin has lost its power.

We know this because the work of Christ did not end with his death on a cross in 1st century Palestine. The work of Christ continues wherever people are confronting the bad news of the world with the good news of God’s love. The work of Christ continues when we lift up his story, the story of Jesus, and say that Jesus changes everything. Not because there are no other stories to tell, but because in this story we hear the truth. And the truth is that we are Adam’s but we are also God’s children.

One last story. I once worked as a youth coordinator at a church-run community center in West Dallas. It was the inner city and there were days when I was overwhelmed by the poverty and despair I saw all around me. One day I went to visit the probation officer for one of the youth I was working with. I told the officer the name of the teenager, Timothy, and he nodded his head. “Oh, yes. He’s been abandoned to the streets by his family. He’s one of those we call a ‘throwaway.’”

I’ve lost track of Timothy. I don’t know what the end of his story will be, but I do know that a lot of those youth got a new identity and a new vision for what they could be because of the presence of the church and people who cared in their lives. Today kids from that community center are going on to college and coming back to work with other kids. Karen Hatch, our youth pastor, and Kristen Webb and several others here in our congregation have been talking about mentoring programs to work with the children in our schools because we know that children flourish when they know they are cared for. And as many troubles as some of our children have on the Shore, none of them is a throwaway. Not one child of God is a throwaway.

Now I don’t know what you need to hear today. Maybe you need to hear that the truth about you and the world is that you can’t do it on your own. You can’t make your way to perfection under your own power. You need to hear that you have the same limits that every child of the first human parents has. Then you can hear about the grace that saves us anyway.

Or maybe you need to hear that you and the world are not, cannot be, and will never be a throwaway in God’s eyes. You are more, much more, than the worst thing you have ever done. And even though there are old wounds and persistent problems that plague your life, this cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Despite the fact that this world is not the best world we can imagine...Despite the fact that we are not the best selves we can hope for…despite, despite, despite…God has come among us. God has lived among us. God has opened the door to a new day. And God invites us to grab hold of the abundance of grace, the free gift we have been given that was revealed in Jesus.

Comedy helps us laugh at the characters who are so close to who we truly are. They bumble and stumble and fall and say things they can’t ever fully understand the meaning of. And so do we. And God laughs because God knows that the ending will be a good one. Because of Jesus, the ending is always in God’s hands. Thanks be to God.

Romans 5:12-19
Therefore, just as sin came into the created order through one person, and death through sin, and thus death spread to every person because all have sinned--for sin was in the created order before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Even so, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the same manner as the transgressions of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the transgression, for if, through the transgression of one, many died, the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, has been given , overflowing for the many.
And the free gift is not like what came of the one man’s sin. For the judgment of the one is condemnation, but the free gift leads to the removal of guilt following many trespasses.
For if death rules through that one, through one person’s trespass, those who take hold of the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness will rule in life through the one person, Jesus Christ.
Therefore, now, as all people are led to judgment through one person’s trespass, so also one person’s act of justification leads to righteousness and life for all people. For just as the many were made sinners by the one man’s disobedience, so also the many will be made righteous by the obedience of one.

I Was There

Some of you may remember a television program that came on back in the days when the TV only came in black and white and there was no such thing as TiVo, LCD displays, plasma and direct dish satellite networks. Does anybody remember those days? Well, I can remember a program hosted by Walter Cronkite in which he would introduce reenactments of historic events, like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart over the Pacific, or the crash of the Hindenburg or the Salem Witchcraft trials. The goal of the program was to take you back and help you live the events as if they were happening right now. The program was called “You Are There.” And it usually ended with Uncle Walt delivering this line: “What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times... and you were there.”

That’s a powerful line, isn’t it? It sounds impressive. There’s some authority to it. Now, it’s not only history that you’ve been talking about. Uncle Walt wanted you to experience that history so that you could make the ultimate claim to truth – “Not only did it happen but I was there.”
TV may now be in color now and we may have many other ways to establish truth, but that impulse is still there. We still want to be able to say, “I was there.” How many of you have ever called somebody on a cell phone during a concert just to prove that you were there? Have you ever done that? You hold your phone up so that your friend who didn’t get tickets can be sure to hear it and you say, “Dude, it’s Hannah Montana and I am here!” Maybe you even take a picture of yourself and e-mail it to them. Your friend hates you for it but it’s thrilling, isn’t it? You are there.

So here’s what I’m thinking today: How do we know that what we say about Jesus is true? How do we know that he is who he says he is? How do we know that the scripture we read today has got it right? I mean maybe Peter, James and John were seeing things when they went up that mountain with Jesus. Maybe when it says that Jesus’ face shone like the sun it just means that he got sunburned. Maybe when Moses and Elijah appeared it was Moses Crockett and Elijah Bundick who lived down the road. Maybe the cloud was a fogbank. And that voice from heaven that says, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased, listen to him”? Maybe James left his radio on. I mean there could be a lot of perfectly reasonable explanations for the Transfiguration, couldn’t there?

That is not the witness of the Bible, though. And if what the Bible says about Jesus is not true, or if he turns out to be somehow less than what we imagine him to be, then you wouldn’t be here today. You wouldn’t crawl out of a nice, warm bed on a cold February Sunday morning to come hear about Moses Crockett. You wouldn’t be baptized in the name of Jesus Johnson. You wouldn’t sing praises and give your life to a man, even if were a really great man, if he weren’t a savior. And the reason you can come here with confidence…the reason you can sing so loudly and proudly…the reason your life has been transformed is because you were there.

Really? I was there? Alex, I thought you just told me you used to watch history programs on TV. How can you say I was there? I wasn’t there. I didn’t go up that mountain. I didn’t see his face shine with the brilliance of heaven. I didn’t see the cloud descend. I didn’t hear the voice ring out. I didn’t see his eyes looking off in the distance toward Jerusalem and a cross and a tomb. I was there? No, that dog won’t hunt, Alex.

Why, then, do we sing that song on Good Friday every year? You know the one I’m talking about. “Were you there, when they crucified my Lord?” What do you think the right answer is to that question? It’s ‘YES’. Yes, I was there. I was there when they crucified my Lord. I was there when the nailed him to the tree. I was there when the sun refused to shine. I was there when they laid him in the tomb. I was there when he rose and conquered death. Were I there? Yes, I were!

Now we say this in a different way than Peter did. In the other scripture reading we had for today, Peter tells a group of early Christians who had not been with Jesus, “I’m not just repeating clever little tales when I tell you who Jesus was. When I tell you about the power of Jesus…when I tell you that Jesus will come again, I’m not just repeating tales out of school. We were eyewitnesses. We heard that voice on the mountain. I was there. So, you’d best listen to what I have to say. Pay attention. Think of this story as a lamp in a gloomy place that you light until the day returns. This story is so good it couldn’t be made up. It’s not just because I want it to be true that I’m telling it. It’s because the Holy Spirit is bearing it to you through me.” And the implication is, “Because you are hearing me say it, and I am a faithful witness…because I was there…when the Holy Spirit speaks through me to you…you were there, too.”

Why is this important? Because there a lot of people out there who would have you believe that not only were you not there, but nobody was there. There are those who believe that we live in a world where great mysteries don’t happen. Where everything can be explained by science or power or any number of perfectly rational explanations. There are those who would have you believe that the world is disenchanted…that religion and faith are just wishful thinking...that when you get to the center of everything there is nothing there, like peeling an onion down to its core – once you do, there’s nothing to see.

But are you going to accept that version of what the world is like? Is that world a livable world? Is that world a lovable world? A world where there is no guiding principle above self-interest? A world where it’s only survival of the fittest? Where love has no purpose and no goal? Who’s going to stop for a Good Samaritan or see God in the face of their neighbor if there is no Jesus on the mountaintop?

This is the thing that Christians know – it is impossible to talk about the reality of the world…it’s impossible to talk about the true nature of the universe…it’s impossible to talk about life and hope and mystery and love and all the things that make for meaningful existence without talking about a particular moment in history, a particular historical figure and the relationship we have with a living savior. For Christians, it’s all about Jesus. Jesus in the morning, Jesus in the evening, Jesus when the sun goes down. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know. When the movie opens, it’s Jesus and when it gets to the last reel, it’s Jesus. When the world begins, it’s Jesus and when it ends, it’s Jesus. When Paul Harvey talks about the rest of the story – it’s Jesus.

Or to use more biblical language, we can turn to Colossians 1:15 and we read that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created…all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together.” [Col. 1:15-17] It all hangs together because of Jesus. It all makes sense.

So when Christians get together to do this crazy thing that we are doing today they are making a claim about the world that nobody else makes. We are making the outrageous claim that Jesus is the reason we hope. And we have seen Jesus in some amazing ways. We have met Jesus in the world of the here and now. We can say, though it defies everything we think we know about how the universe operates…we can say, “I was there.”

A few years ago I was riding down a road in South Texas when I saw Jesus do a miracle. I was with a group of college students on a Spring Break mission trip and we were on the way to the beach. We had been working on both sides of the border for a few days and we had taken the afternoon off to go to the beach and dip our feet in the Gulf of Mexico. It had been a dramatic week. We had been helping to build houses for low-income people in McAllen. We had been building a church in Nuevo Progresso, Mexico. We had met with a Border Patrol officer who talked to us about his frustrations in trying to police a border that often didn’t seem like a border at all. We had met with a woman who ran a refugee center for political refugees from Central America. We had been gleaning grapefruits in the orchards.

Now we were driving to the beach and sitting next to me in the van we had borrowed from the local Methodist Church was a student who was really struggling with what to do with her life. She had a big heart and a strong sense of justice. She knew that there were many things broken about the world and she felt a strong calling to make them right. As we were talking about the things we had seen on the border that week she said, very simply, “I could see myself living here.” It was a just a stray comment. Something you and I might say in the moment that never comes to fruition. But as soon as she said it we both knew it was true. She would work on the border. A call was forming even as she said the words.

That student went on to work with an organization called Borderworks on the Arizona border, taking students on mission trips to gain greater understanding of the people and issues that affect the border region. Later she got a call into ordained ministry and now she is attending seminary preparing for the Episcopal priesthood. And I look back on that moment driving through the South Texas desert and I know I was present as Jesus did a miracle in her life. How do I know? I was there.

I venture to say that many of you have been there, too. Maybe it was last summer when the youth went on a mission trip to Christiansburg and worked on the homes of needy people in the mountains. Was there a moment then when you saw Jesus? Maybe in the face of one of the people you served? You can say it. You were there.

Maybe it was the Sunday when we welcomed the Arcangels class into membership in the church and we saw Jesus in the faces of each person who came forward. You can say it. You were there.

Maybe it happened when you were helping out at Food Bank one Friday and you realized that all the work and resources that go into putting boxes together were really so that you could meet Jesus in the people who came for help. You can say it. You were there.

Maybe it happened when your child was born and you held her in your arms for the first time and you knew it was a holy moment. Maybe it happened at a church camp when you were young and gave your life to Jesus. Maybe it happened when you held the hand of a loved one as they passed from this life to the next and you could do it with confidence that they were in the Lord’s care. You can say it. You were there.

Maybe it happened when the Spirit took hold of you at a revival. Maybe it happened when you met the love of your life and you knew that nothing would ever be the same. Maybe it happened when a respected elder took notice of you and took you aside and told you that you had gifts you never thought you had. Maybe it was at an altar call. Maybe it was in a conversation. Somewhere in your life I’m betting that you had an experience of meeting Jesus, so go ahead now. Say it. You were there!

Karen Hatch and Lena Watts and I were at a conference this week as a follow-up to our experience of hosting Eddie as a ministry intern last summer. We were meeting together with congregations from across the country who were doing similar things and who were trying to be congregations that lift up the call to vocation and ministry. There were churches there from D.C. and Illinois and Iowa and Georgia and Texas.

What we learned is that the call comes when we notice what God is doing in a young person’s life, when we name that calling in ways that they and we can hear it, and when we nurture that call. This congregation has been doing that for many years. As we got ready to go to this conference we did interviews with several of you and we asked when it was that you felt a sense of belonging and that you were making a difference. Many of you talked about how people in the congregation noticed you, called you by name, and nurtured you in your faith and your life. You talked about you felt closer to God and enabled to follow Jesus because of the claim that people here made on your life.

The thing of it is that we can make outrageous claims about the power and presence of God because we have experienced God’s presence. We know who we are and we know that we are Jesus’ own people. Look around you. You not only were there. You are there. Jesus Christ is alive and present.
On this day, as every day, we can say it: What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times... and I was there. Thanks be to God.

2 Peter 1:16-21
Now we were not following clever little tales when we made known to you the power and the anticipated coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. No, we were eyewitnesses to that magnificence. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, a voice was borne to him such as from the magnificent glory, saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I delight.” We heard this voice borne from the heavens because we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we hold secure this prophetic word that you would do well to pay attention to, as to a lamp in a gloomy place, until the day shines through and the Morning Star rises in your hearts. We know this above all, that all prophetic writings are not known through one’s own explanation, because prophecy is not borne through the will of a person but rather through the Holy Spirit bearing it for people to speak from God.