What We Shall Be

Last week was Halloween and if you came out to our Harvest Party at the church last Monday night you would have seen a great collection of costumes. I saw people dressed up as pirates and cowboys, a flower in a pot, Mario from the video games, and Sawyer came as a Northampton County Sheriff's Deputy. It was really great. But what I have been trying to figure out is why we are so fascinated these days with zombies.


In Norfolk they had a huge zombie night in Ghent where people came dressed as zombies and, I don't know, I guess they chased each other slowly around the city. It seems like everywhere you look these days there are movies and TV shows and events where zombies are the star of the show.
I'm sure there's some great cultural point to be made about all this. What is it about where we are as a society right now that makes zombies our favorite scary creatures? Is it because the economy is in such bad shape that we like to envision our fears as a slumping, lumbering zombie? Is it a sign of our guilt over things we have done in the past - a symbol for the debt crisis where the things we thought were long gone are coming back to haunt us because we still haven't paid for them? I don't know. Maybe some of us just like gory movies and there's plenty of gore in zombie movies.

Or maybe there's some image of us in those zombies. Maybe we feel like zombies. Maybe we're feeling a little disconnected from life. Not quite dead but not fully alive either. Maybe we're hungry for life, hungry for something we can't even name. And because we are so bad at imagining that that hunger could lead us to something beautiful and life-giving we imagine that the only future for us is ugly and disturbing. Maybe we're the zombies. Or maybe that's just me.

The first letter of John in the New Testament is a short little book. It was written to Christians near the end of the first century and it imagines a world of conflict - the children of light versus...zombies...no, actually the antichrists. Now, I need to be clear about who the antichrists were. These are not some strange, supernatural creatures. Antichrist is the term the letter-writer was using to describe the false teachers who had taken the gospel message and perverted it - teaching things that were contrary to what Christ taught - antichristian teachings. Chapter 2 verse 19 tells us that, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us." (NET). And who is an antichrist? Verse 22 tells us that the antichrist is "the person who denies the Father and the Son."

The letter-writer reminds us that we should expect false teachings, especially as the second coming of Christ comes near. We should expect that there will be some who will try to present some other picture of God and Jesus. But what is the promise that we have been given that the antichrists want to deny? Verse 25 says: "Now this is the promise that he himself made to us: eternal life." (NET) It is eternal life that sets Christians apart.

And how do we hold on that promise? By remaining in Christ, remaining in the light, and by doing the things that Jesus told us to do. "The one who says he or she resides in God ought to walk just as Jesus walked" - verse 6 - loving their fellow Christians, trusting in the forgiveness of our sins, and expecting Christ's coming again.

When we talk about saints, as we do today on this All Saints Day, one of the things that marks them is the way that they are able to focus on exactly these things when it seems that all the world is coming apart around them. I think about my colleague in ministry, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who I talk about in my new Advent book. Kathleen went into West Dallas, which was a difficult place, to begin a difficult ministry as pastor of a new church in an old, abandoned United Methodist Church. She was a single woman and she was determined to live in the neighborhood even though everybody around her told her that the toll would be too great. And it was hard but Kathleen said, “When it’s not convenient, when it costs us and we still take the time to listen to another’s heart and we love deeply, hope emerges.” So she did. And her church grew, mostly with young kids and poor folks.

Then she got a diagnosis of cancer at a very young age. Three years ago she died. But until her last week she was preaching at her new church, welcoming people at her home and asking them how they were.
People like Kathleen are remarkable because, when the world closes in on them and they are experiencing pain and discouragement, they keep their eyes focused on another place. The natural things, when we are experiencing illness or grief or loss is to let the horizon of our world shrink to the limits of our pain. We become captive to the thing that is happening to us. We define ourselves by what we can't do. But saints have a bigger vision.

The verses from 1 John that we actually read today tell us that the thing that defines Christians is not that they are better than the rest of the world. Not that they are immune from the pains of this world. The thing that defines them is that they know they are children of God. Their identity is secure. It doesn't flap around in the wind. It is secure. So as a Christian I know that whatever label others want to put on me - victim, outcast, old, weak, ugly, fat, scrawny, sick, loser, incapable, unable, unwanted - whatever label others want to put on me - none of those things define who I am. Because I am a child of God whose life is in Christ. And because of that I can love and look at the world with new eyes.

"See what sort of love the Father has given to us," 1 John chapter 3 says, "that we should be called God’s children – and indeed we are!...The world does not know us: because it did not know him. Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is." What we will be has not yet been revealed - but we know this - that we will not be zombies - we will be like Jesus. Seeing Jesus, just as he is, we will be like Jesus.

We've got a lot of things to celebrate as we remember today the names of those who have gone before us. The moments when grace pervaded the space between us and that other person. The hands we held. The prayers they prayed. The witness they gave in confronting the evil powers of this world. The tears they shed and the laughter. These things don't die because they grow out of love and, as Song of Songs tells us, "Love is stronger than death; passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love."

But the saints don't die because they now have their eyes fixed on Jesus. Even in this life our eyes can be fixed on Jesus. It's one of the reasons Paul could call the Christians he wrote to "the saints assembled" in Rome or Ephesus or wherever they were. We are saints, not because we are holy in ourselves, but because we have our hope in the one who is holy and who can make us whole.

So what are you doing to get ready for the banquet table that God has prepared for us in heaven? Have you put your confidence in the one who shines in light? Or you lumbering and shuffling along in darkness and death? Are you focused on all that you have lost or are you trusting in the promise that what lies ahead makes all that we are going through now look like a dim shadow?

I don't put down this life. It is where we get a foretaste of what love is all about. It's where we get to live in love and fellowship with others. It's where we know the touch of our mother's lips on our forehead. It's where we know the smell of a meal at our grandmother's table. It's where we feel the strength of our fathers, the wisdom of our grandfathers, the thrill of a lover's kiss. It's where we experience the deep, warm rumble of a cat's purr, the eager, panting energy of a dog, and the soaring wonder of an eagle high above us. There is a lot that is good about this world. And the promise is better. It only gets better from here.

What shall we be? I don't know for sure, but we have a glimpse when we see what the saints see. So go out to love. Thanks be to God.

Fish, not Snakes

Why did we just do that? That prayer we just finished - "May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer" – why do we do it? The words are from the Psalms - Psalm 19. But why do we say it?

You know, it could be some kind of insurance policy so that what I say and what you understand me to say will be holy. It could also be a way of redeeming this sermon in case it’s really awful and maybe the Holy Spirit can fix it into something that looks like. Or maybe you’re not ready for it – you’re worried about falling asleep or your mind wandering. After all, a lot of the time we come to church not too sure that we're really ready for it or worthy of it, and I know that there are a lot of times I come with a sermon I'm not real sure is the best I can do. Maybe if we just offer it all up to God at the beginning like that God can salvage the morning for us. Is that what we're doing? Or worst of all, is this prayer just a set piece in some kind of meaningless ritual?

So here’s the problem of the day. Prayer is a funny thing. As Christians we talk about it all the time, but we don’t really believe in it. At least we don’t act like we believe in it. Prayer is one of the things that make us different from the rest of the world – it’s a strange thing that Christians do. But I wonder if we really believe in it.

We know it's important because Jesus did it. In Luke's gospel especially we see Jesus going apart to pray on a regular basis. Jesus talks about prayer more in Luke's gospel as well, as he does in this passage we read this morning.

All through the history of the Church the followers of Jesus have prayed. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, set aside two hours a day at a minimum to pray. Martin Luther, who was one of the early leaders of the Protestant movement, once said, "I'm so busy that I couldn't go on without three hours of daily prayer." Not all of the Christian family has been that disciplined, but prayer was a large part of what Christians did.

And now? Now it seems that we treat our prayers like relics from the past or liturgical Muzak - background music for the real business of worship. Do you worry about this? Do you worry that prayer gives us a chance to air out our best intentions and our current worries, we talk about the things we wish for and the people we care for, but without any confidence that the things we pray for will really happen? And when they do we are very reluctant to give the credit to prayer.

The world around us has changed. The early disciples and even Martin Luther didn't have what we have. We can trot out physics or medicine to explain away miracles. We can test things to see if God had any involvement in them and since God leaves no DNA evidence behind, God never gets the credit. Good things still happen in this world - but do they really happen because of prayer?

Which brings us right to the heart of Jesus' promises. One of Jesus' disciples saw him praying and said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just like John the Baptist taught his disciples." What the disciple was looking for, we really don't know, but he was probably looking for a set prayer, which was a common thing for a teacher to give to his disciples in those days - a prayer that they could repeat and which would identify them with the teacher.

Jesus responds to this request by giving the disciples what we now call the Lord's Prayer. But he goes on to say several other things - one of which we say so often that it has become almost a cliché, yet when we really look at it I'm not sure we really believe it. Jesus said, "Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you."

Now one of the things Jesus is saying with these short statements is that we need to be persistent in prayer - not just consistent, but shamelessly persistent. Just before this he has told the disciples a rather strange parable about how they expect a friend to get up in the night to give them something they need. Jesus said, even if the friend won't get up for friendship's sake, he will eventually get up because you won't quit knocking on the door and he wants to shut you up. Shameless persistence has its rewards and Jesus seems to be saying that we need to be knocking on heaven's door in the same way. Then he goes on to say, "Ask, seek, knock. Keep up the racket. God will hear you."

But the other thing that Jesus says with these statements is the really hard thing. Jesus seems to be saying that whatever we ask for we will get. "Ask - you will receive. Seek - you will find." Really? Now normally I'm really cautious about trying to change the plain meaning of Jesus' statements. Jesus said some pretty harsh things and I think he meant them to be harsh. When Jesus said it's harder for a rich person to get into the kingdom than it is for to squeeze a camel through the eye of the needle - I don't think he was talking about spiritual riches - I think he was talking about physical riches and yes, it is very, very hard to enter the kingdom of heaven that way. When Jesus said, "Be kind to your enemies and turn the other cheek," I don't think he meant only in certain situations and with certain enemies, I think he meant with all enemies. It's too easy for us to say, "Yes, Jesus, but..."

But...ask and you shall receive? Seek and you shall find? These are simple truths that are too simple to be truth! The world doesn't work like that. For every prayer that asks for justice to be done there is the cry of one who feels their prayers have not been answered. Prayers certainly don't work like Burger King where you can "have it your way".

Besides all this there is a theological problem - which is a fancy way of saying that this is not the God I know! God doesn't exist to fulfill our desires like Aladdin’s genie. That sort of God would be a God created in our image instead of the other way around. There's a word for a god like that - it's called an idol. And from all we know of Jesus and the Jewish faith which he grew up in, I don't think he was talking about a magic spell when he said, "Ask, and you shall receive."

So where does that leave us? If prayer is not about the power to ask God to change the world as we know it - what is it about?

I remember a time when a prayer was a very important thing to me. It was 1984 and I was at the United Methodist Assembly Center in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina where we were having the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference. This is the event that happens once every four years where we elect bishops for this region of the country. And in 1984 I was a lay delegate.

I remember this prayer because I was asked to begin it. It was late in the night near the end of the conference. About twenty of us were gathered in a cabin on the edge of the lake there. We were there because one member of our group, Rev. Leontine Kelly, was getting ready to get on a plane to go to Idaho. We didn't know for sure at the time, but Tina Kelly was about to be voted in as the first African-American woman bishop in the United Methodist Church by the Western Jurisdiction.

It had been a very disappointing week for us in Lake Junaluska. All of us had come to the conference hoping that the Southeastern Jurisdiction would see what we saw in Tina Kelly, a strong, dynamic, faith-filled woman who could lead the Church as a bishop. Instead she was forgotten and ignored - even by the members of the Virginia delegation. It became clear very quickly that she would not be elected by this conference.

But then one night, word came to us that the Western Jurisdiction, which was meeting at the same time, had put her name in as a nominee. There was a chance that she would be elected. So we gathered together in that cabin and held hands in a circle and prepared to send her off. That's when Tina Kelly asked me to begin the prayer.

So we prayed. We really wanted Tina to become a bishop. We really did. We were amazed that other people were so blinded to her gifts in ministry and leadership. So we didn't hide that from God in the prayer. We prayed that she would be elected. We prayed that those who might demean her because she was black and a woman would see her true worth. We were really honest. But in the end we prayed that God's will would be done. Because God knew the Church better than we did. God could see the true needs even if we thought we had the clearest vision. And we said, 'not our will but yours be done'.

Tina Kelly got on the plane that night in Asheville and the next day in Boise, Idaho she was elected bishop. She served in the San Francisco area and she was a wonderful bishop. She's retired now and she came to our annual conference one year as the guest preacher. And one of her sermons was about that night at Lake Junaluska and about that prayer. It was a powerful moment.

God didn't make that happen because we knew best. It was a powerful moment because somehow in that prayer we were drawn into the will of God. The prayer opened us to the new possibilities of the Holy Spirit moving among us. The prayer deepened our relationship with a God who is so close to us that we can refer to God as a loving parent. That's what prayer does. It doesn't guarantee us everything we want - it guarantees that we will receive, that we will find, that God will answer the door in the middle of the night.

That's why Jesus teaches us a prayer that says "My will be done" – no, it doesn’t say that -- it says, in the version from Matthew’s gospel, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done". The greatest answer to prayer that we can receive is the knowledge of God. The greatest quest we can go on doesn't end with a prize of gold - it ends with the companionship of the Holy Spirit.

You see, a very wise person once said that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Opening ourselves up to God - really being honest about who we are and how flawed we are - shamelessly persisting in offering our worries and cares to God...when we lay ourselves out there like that we are on the road to discovering the God who dwells within us and knows our deepest needs.

After all, what does knocking on heaven’s door do for us except get us close to God? If we are at God’s door every day, how much closer will be to God? Then, maybe, we will be able to see that even if God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way that we think they ought to be answered, we will at least be able to trust that God’s intention is always for our good. A good parent does not give a snake to a child who is asking for a fish. A good parent doesn’t give a scorpion to a child who wants an egg. God gives us fish, not snakes.

Richard Foster, who wrote the book Celebration of Discipline, says that "to pray is to change". But what we change is not God - or even God's mind. What changes is us. So those impossible words bring us closer to who God has always intended that we should be. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock on heaven's door, and it will be opened unto you. Thanks be to God.

Luke 11:1-13
Now he was praying in a certain place and it happened, as he finished, that some of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just like John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, may thy name be held in reverence,
may your kingdom come.
Give us the bread we need for the coming day,
and forgive us our sins
for we also forgive all those who are indebted to us.
And do not lead us into a time of testing.'"
He also said to them, "What if one of you has a friend and you go to him in the middle of the night and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because my friend has arrived on a journey and I do not have anything to set before him.'? And he answers from within, 'Don't bother me; the door has already been shut and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even if he doesn't get up and give it to him because he is his friend, then because of his shameless persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
"And I tell you this as well: Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For all who ask receive and all those who seek find and to the one knocking the door shall be opened.
"Is there a parent among you, who, when their child asks for a fish will then, instead of a fish, give the child a snake? Or if the child asks for an egg will give a scorpion? So if you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”

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

O For a Thousand Tongues

Charles Wesley

My first church appointment out of seminary was not in this country. A lot of people joked with me when I came to the Eastern Shore about my “overseas mission” but I had a previous overseas mission to England. For a year Suzanne and I served in the British Methodist Church on the York:South Circuit in northern England. It was a great year. We got steeped in English history, learned how to drink hot tea properly, and came to love fish and chips. I also got to meet my first British eccentrics.

You know these folks. People who have an extraordinary interest in very specific subjects. Like Cyril Nutbrown, who was an inventor and who used to tell me all about his latest ideas. When I left England he was ready to revolutionize the potato chip industry because he had figured out that if the packagers would just put the opening to a bag on the side rather than along the narrow top then people would be able to get more of their hand into the bag and would therefore grab more chips with each dip into the bag and would therefore eat more chips.

Cyril could tell you everything you needed to know about potato chip bags, but Oliver Beckerlegge could tell you anything you could ever want to know about Charles Wesley. Oliver was a retired Methodist minister who kind of took me under his wing at Methodist gatherings in York. He was probably in his 80s when I met him and I didn’t realize then what an accomplished man I was meeting. Oliver was the editor of Charles Wesley’s unpublished works. He also compiled all the names of Methodist ministers who served from 1797 to 1932. He was such an eccentric that he actually had an entry in The Indexer, the international journal of indexing, the mark of a true professional, but that’s another story. What really put the fire in Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes was Charles Wesley.

Now why should that be? Many of you may not even know who Charles Wesley is or was. What is it about him that would inspire an aging Methodist preacher to devote so much time and energy to studying him? Well, this being the 300th birthday of Charles Wesley I think you ought to know about the object of Oliver Beckerlegge’s passion. Because his passion was not just about Charles Wesley. His ultimate passion was for God and his desire was that everyone should find the words to do what we were all designed to do, which is to praise God.

Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707 about 30 miles down the road from York in a place called Epworth. It’s still a small town in the Lincolnshire countryside. His older brother was John Wesley, who is usually credited with being the first Methodist, and their paths were closely intertwined for the rest of their lives.

Their father was a priest in the Church of England, an institution which was at one of the lowest points in its history. There were many people who felt that all the fire had gone out of the church. The church still had a prominent place in the society, but it seemed to have no power to move the people to love God. Even so, John and Charles were soon set on a course to being priests, partly as a result of their mother, Susannah, who is one of the most energetic figures in our history. She had 19 children, 10 of whom reached adulthood. Even with all those children, she devoted an hour each day to teaching each individual child. It had a profound impact on the brothers.

John grew up to be the driven, public leader with many of the qualities of his mother. Charles was a little more carefree. They both went to Oxford and one day John was trying to counsel his younger brother to be a little more restrained and studious. Charles replied, “What, would you have me to become a saint all at once?”[i] But he eventually did buckle down and become a pretty good scholar. He mastered seven languages and followed John into the priesthood.

In 1735 the two brothers took off as missionaries to Georgia. It was not a pretty sight. Charles got shot at, slandered and shunned. By December of the next year he was back in England, a broken and discouraged man. John lasted another year and then came back in a similar state. Someone who saw the two soon after John returned said that Charles was “at present very much distressed in his mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the Saviour.”[ii] It was a dark period.

But then came a remarkable week in May. The two brothers were in London and Charles was lying ill in the home of some Moravians, a small band of Christians whose faith had inspired him in Georgia. On May 21st he opened his bible to Isaiah 40:1, which reads: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” In the care of the comforting Moravians he was changed at that moment. He wrote in his journal, “I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ…I saw that by faith I stood, by the continual support of faith…I went to bed still sensible of my own weakness…yet confident of Christ’s protection.”[iii] Three days later his brother, John, was sitting in a service at a meetinghouse on Aldersgate Street when he felt his heart strangely warmed. It was the week of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit had embraced the Wesley brothers. They were never the same. Neither was England.

Right away Charles Wesley started writing a hymn. It was the first of about 6,500 hymns. He wrote and additional 2,500 poems. Some have figured that this means he wrote an average of twelve lines of hymnody every day, seven days a week, for the next 50 years.[iv]

But this is the thing that made Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes light up when he talked about Charles Wesley: It wasn’t just that he was prolific, but Wesley knew how to give people words that allowed their hearts to sing. There has been a legend in Methodist circles for many years that Wesley took old bar tunes and set his words to them so that people would sing them. That’s probably not true, but it is true that people took to Charles’ gift.

Methodists changed the world by singing their faith. That was new. There was music in Anglican churches and in other Christian churches, but it was primarily done by large, formal choirs. Methodists believed that everybody could sing….that everybody should sing! One year after his conversion, the Methodists had their first hymnal made up almost entirely of songs by Charles. Before John Wesley died in 1791, he had published at least 64 hymnals,[v] and Methodists were singing at the top of their lungs. One observer said of them, “Never did I hear such praying or such singing. Their singing was not only the most harmonious and delightful I ever heard, but they sang ‘lustily and with a good courage’….If there be such a thing as heavenly music upon earth I heard it there.”[vi]

One year after his conversion, Wesley wrote a hymn to recognize the anniversary of his being claimed by Christ and sent forth by the Holy Spirit. In it he talked about how much he wanted to multiply the praise he wanted to give to God. In the hymn he calls for others to join him in singing – especially those who felt far off from God, who were wounded and searching and looking for God to come and save them. You probably know this song. It has been at the front of many, many editions of Methodist hymnals, including our current one.

1. O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace.

3. Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
'Tis music in the sinner's ears,
'Tis life, and health, and peace.

4. He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me.

5. He speaks; and listening to His voice,
New life the dead receive,
The mournful broken hearts rejoice
The humble poor believe

6. Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come;
And leap, ye lame for joy!

There were other verses, too, that didn’t make the hymnal. 18 of them in all. And in these other verses Charles was trying to extend the realm of singers. He knew what his life had been like. He knew that coming to know Christ had not just a little bit of his life – it had changed everything about his life. He knew he had no more right to the kingdom than the lowliest person he met. They were all welcomed in by God’s grace:

Harlots and publicans and thieves,
In holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes
From crimes as great as mine.

Murderers and all ye hellish crew,
Ye sons of lust and pride,
Believe the Savior died for you;
For me the Savior died.

With me, your chief, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below
And own that love is heaven.

There were other Wesley songs that have survived, too. When we sing at Christmas time, “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn king!’” we are singing the words of Charles Wesley. When we sing on Easter morning, “Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!” we are singing the words of Charles Wesley. When we gather at annual conference in a month’s time, one of the first songs we will sing is one that Methodists have been singing a long time: “And are we yet alive and see each other’s face? Glory and thanks to Jesus give for his almighty grace!” Those, too, are the words of Charles Wesley.

We still sing these songs because the words have not lost their power to tell us who we are and how great God’s saving grace is. They are full of references to Scripture. When Bernard Manning looked at the Wesley’s hymns he found that there were only five books that weren’t represented: Ezra, Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Third John.”[vii] You may not have heard of Nahum and Zephaniah, but if Wesley had written a hymn about them you might have!

Charles also knew how important it was to lift up the love of God. He didn’t have any illusions about what the world was like or what our lives are like when they are trapped in sin. He was capable of describing it in some graphic detail. Like us, he lived in a time of wars and he wrote about it in a poem he called “For universal peace.” We’ve got it on page 449 of our hymnal:

1. Our earth we now lament to see
With floods of wickedness o’erflowed,
With violence, wrong, and cruelty,
One wide-extended field of blood,
Where men like fiends, each other tear
In all the hellish rage of war.

In the second hymn he uses Satanic images from the book of Revelation and a reference to the child sacrifices condemned in Jeremiah and 2 Kings to talk about the devastating consequences of human violence:

2. As listed on Abbadon’s side,
They mangle their own flesh, and slay;
Tophet is moved, and opens wide
Its mouth for its enormous prey;
And myriads sink beneath the grave,
And plunge into the flaming wave.

Then there is the plea for peace:

3. O might the universal Friend
The havoc of his creatures see!
Bid our unnatural discord end,
Declare us reconciled in thee!
Write kindness on our inward parts
And chase the murderer from our hearts!

Wesley knew that death and destruction could not ultimately win the day. God had already claimed that prize through Jesus and the cross. That’s why he could also write these words in one of my favorite Wesley hymns ‘Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown’:

’Tis love! ‘Tis love! Thou diedst for me,
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, Universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move;
Thy nature and thy name is love.

That’s the vision that made Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes glimmer. He knew how much life and beauty and energy had been captured in the words of that old eighteenth century Methodist. He knew that in the harmonies of heaven, there is a strain that rings with Wesley’s words of praise. I suspect Oliver is singing those words right now.

So why do we care? Why do we bother to remember a 300-year-old poet? Because there is still a place for poetry. There is still a place for people who can look at this world and see beauty. There is still a place for words that open worlds untold. There is still a place for people who can talk without shame and without hesitation about a love that lies behind all the dangers and darkness of the world.

In the gospel reading for today, Jesus prays to God for his disciples, that they may be one. He knew that they would be tempted to division and breaking apart. He knew that the world would doubt their story. So what he prays for is that they will be united and in their unity they would testify to the love that God showed forth on Jesus and in Jesus. And because God loved Jesus, God loved the followers of Jesus and because God loved them and drew them together into a new community, it showed that God’s love has the power to overcome all those things that threaten to pull us apart and that threaten to make us less than God’s own people.

We still have that calling…to be one people…but to offer praise in our language, in our tongue. We all have a song to sing to God. You know molecular biologists have discovered that when you get right down to it…down into the cells, into the atoms, into the smallest fragments of the way we are made…at the most basic level, what we are made of is vibrations. Each of us is a tone, a unique note quavering to a beat we cannot even consciously acknowledge. That note is singing a song of praise to God. What we need is to liberate that song so that we can join the angels in singing. How can we keep from singing?

So happy birthday to Charles Wesley. And thanks be to Oliver Beckerlegge and all the other eccentric saints of God who have not been ashamed to lift up their voices in praise of the God who has not let us go and will not let the world be until it becomes the place it was created to be – the realm of God’s glory. Thanks be to God.

John 17:20-26
“I do not ask this only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one. Just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so may they also be one in us, so that the world might believe that you sent me. The glory you have given to me, I have given them, so that they can be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me, so that they may be made perfect in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them just as you have loved me.

“Father, those whom you have give me, I will it that where I am they may be there with me, so that they may see my glory, which you have given to me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. Just Father, the world has not come to know you, but I know you and these know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

[i] www.igracemusic.com/hymnbook/authors/charles_wesley.html
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] William C. Goold, Good News, May/June 2007.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.

Discovering Ourselves Across the Waters

Acts 16:9-15
In the night, Paul had a vision. A certain Macedonian man was standing and calling to him, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us."
Since he had seen the vision, we immediately sought to go into Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to preach good news to them. We put to sea from Troas, on a straight course to Samothrace, followed the next day by Neapolis. From that place we came into Philippi, which is in the first ranks of the Macedonian cities and a colony. We stayed in this city for several days.
On the day of the Sabbath we went outside of the gate by the river where we supposed prayer would be happening, and taking a seating position we spoke to the women gathered there. Then a certain woman named Lydia, a dealer in fine purple cloth from the city of Tiatira and a worshipper of God, heard. The Lord opened up her heart completely to attend to what Paul was saying. When she was baptized along with her whole household, she beseeched us, saying, "If you judge me to be a believer in the Lord, come stay in my house." So she prevailed upon us.

One of the things that I live with as a pastor is the fact that there are a fair number of people who think that what I do makes absolutely no sense. There are not many people who question the need for builders, janitors, teachers, police officers, store managers, or farm workers. If there were no farm workers it would be pretty evident pretty quickly that we have a serious problem. But pastors? What would change in our world if there were no pastors? And by extension there is a question for you. Christians? What is it that Christians do that we would miss if they weren't there?

There are some people who are asking that very question. Recently some high-profile books have been written by authors who feel like religion is not only nonsensical but it actually has some negative effects on the world. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher, has written two books recently, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, which call faith into question.

“Religious faith is a conversation stopper,” Harris says. “The only thing that guarantees a truly open-ended collaboration among human beings is their willingness to have their views (and resulting behavior) modified by conversation--by new evidence and new arguments. Otherwise, when the stakes are high, there is nothing to appeal to but force. If I believe that I can get to Paradise by flying a plane into a building, and I am content to believe this without evidence, then there will be nothing another person can say to dissuade me, because my leap of faith has made me immune to the powers of conversation.”[i] Harris is basically saying that religion, faith, can lead people to do crazy things…terrible things because how do you convince them otherwise? He assumes that because there is no rational evidence for faith it will always lead to irrational acts.

Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist, has also written a new book on atheism entitled God is not Great. He also believes that religion, including the Christian faith, is a leftover from days of superstition and that it causes people to hate others rather than to love them. “Religion has been an enormous multiplier of tribal suspicion and hatred,” Hitchens says, “with members of each group talking of the other in precisely the tones of the bigot.”[ii]

These are intelligent guys and fascinating to listen to. I respect their insight and their challenge. But they don’t respect what I do and they don’t respect who we are because they have come to see faith, whether Islamic or Buddhist or Christian, as irrational, unyielding, inhumane, bigoted, hate-filled and bound to old, old beliefs. Interesting. It would be easy to respond by pulling out defensive slogans, like a T-shirt I once saw that said, “God is dead, and it credited the quote to the philosopher Frederich Nietzsche. Then it said, ‘Nietzsche is dead’ – God.” But there’s something to be learned from listening to our critics. Christianity needs some evangelists who will listen and respond and help others to see what true Christian community looks like. Books like these also challenge us to look again at what we do believe and why we believe it. What is the ground of our hope? It’s a new mission field.

But I really didn’t come here today to talk about Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. I came here to talk about the Holy Spirit because that’s what sends us forth into these mission fields. The Holy Spirit is what grabs hold of us and rattles our cages and turns our world upside down and gives us visions of things we have never seen and sends us places we have never gone. If we look unusual or even threatening to the world, it is because the Holy Spirit has made us different from the rest of the world.

The story we have from the scriptures today is one that gives us a blueprint for what all Christian outreach and evangelism is about. In a lot of ways it is similar to the story we had last week about Peter and his vision in the sailcloth. You remember that Peter’s vision was of animals – creatures that had been declared unclean by the law of Moses. A voice comes to Peter and tells him to kill and eat and he resists, but it is a vision that changes everything. The door was being opened for new things to happen and new people to come in. The result was that Peter baptized a Roman soldier and his family causing a big crisis within the early Christian church. God was opening the door to foreigners to come into the faith.

Well, the vision in today’s story is very similar. Paul had been traveling as an apostle to the Gentiles – the nations. But his journeys had only taken him within Asia. But he has a vision. In a dream he sees a Macedonian man standing on the other side of the strait that separates Asia from Europe. The Macedonian says, “Come across and help us.” It was a crazy thing to do. A dangerous thing to do. Christians had no foothold in Europe. There was no compelling reason to go. No precedent. But when the Holy Spirit had fallen at Pentecost Peter had remembered the words of the prophet Joel – “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, your old people dream dreams.” Visions had an impact. Dreams meant something. It was tested by the community. There were conferences to determine whether things were ‘of God’ or not. But people did not believe that God had stopped communicating. God still had things to do and Paul and the early missionaries were caught up in the energy of the Holy Spirit.

So when the vision of the man from Macedonia comes along, Paul and his companions go. Luke, who wrote Acts, says, “We sought to go immediately because we were convinced that God was calling us to preach the good news in this new place.” So they sailed and they traveled to Philippi, a major city in the area of Macedonia.

But listen to what they did. They didn’t just set up on a street corner and begin to preach. The scripture says they stayed in the city several days. They were getting the lay of the land. Trying to understand this new environment. Trying to listen for what God wanted them to do.

Philippi was on the main road across Macedonia. It would be a place where all sorts of ideas were in the air. All sorts of religions would have been represented. It was also a colony of Rome, which meant that it had a lot of Roman features. This was a cosmopolitan place – a crossroads of the world.

Does this sound familiar? The Eastern Shore may not be the crossroads of the world, but we know something about living in a nation where a lot of different ideas are in the air. We know something about living in a world where religion is a question of debate and a source of energy and tension. We know something about looking around at the world and wondering, ‘How do we speak to this place? These people? This time?’

Well, that’s what Paul and these early disciples were doing. They spent several days in the city, and then on the Jewish Sabbath, they went looking for the place where Jews would gather to pray. This was outside the city gates, down by the river. What they found was a small group of women, including Lydia, a businesswoman who dealt in clothes dyed in purple. They sat down and began to talk and in the midst of their talking, it happened. Lydia heard. I mean, really heard. She believed and on the spot she and her entire house were baptized.

The Holy Spirit was in Europe, too. And the same sorts of things that the disciples had seen happening in Asia were now happening here. Lives were changed. Lost people were found. Women who lived on the edge were brought to the center. And people who were searching for life and love and hope, found it. Lydia said, “If you think I’m a believer…if you think I can be…come, stay in my house with my family.” Lydia was the first European Christian.

So what’s the word for us? There is a word for us here. One of the things that make people like Harris and Hitchens shake their heads at us Christians is that we read this story, which is an old history lesson from two millennia ago and we believe that God has something to say to us through it. How can that be? What do Paul and Luke and Lydia have to tell us 21st century people?

Maybe it’s the message that we have been here before. As Christians we have been in this situation before. There have been times in our history before when we have had to listen for a voice, search for a new vision, change the way we have done things. The early church began as a small band of Jews in Jerusalem in a far-off corner of the Roman Empire. But the Holy Spirit came on them and it was suddenly clear that things were going to get uncomfortable. Peter had a vision and they realized that it was now going to be O.K. to let in people they didn’t think they could. Paul had a vision and it took them one step further. Now we don’t just welcome those who come, we go to them, even if it means going to places that we have never been.

The truth is being learned over and over again. If you want something you’ve never had – like an experience of the Holy Spirit – you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done. If you want something you’ve never had, you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done. And when the church has listened to that challenge and acted in that way, it has been embraced by the Holy Spirit all over again.

And the kingdom grows, not by domination, not by the sword, not by hate, and not by ignorance and failing to listen – the kingdom grows by going to be with people where they are and sitting down with them and talking with them and going into their homes. Those are all the methods that Paul used. And it challenges us to a relational form of evangelism – that keeps reaching out.

You know people who are thirsting for a word of truth. You know people who are hurting. You know people who don’t want to be beat over the head with another sales pitch. They just want someone to listen to them. They just want someone whom they can look at and see in their lives a bit of integrity. They want to see someone who is earnestly struggling to be a better person and who is doing that because they have had an encounter with the Living Christ. Will you be the person to whom they can look? Will you be the one who sits with them and offers a word of hope?

This week a lot of the small groups in our church are beginning a study of the book The Myth of the 200 Barrier. It’s a book that’s going to get us asking a lot of questions about ourselves. The 200 in the title refers to the Average Sunday Attendance in a church, which happens to be about where we are. The book describes what happens in churches that are our size.

Now you might wonder – why the emphasis on numbers? Isn’t our size the right size? The size God has created us to be? What is our purpose in reading this? Are we focusing on numbers over quality of ministry? Why are we rocking the boat? Why are we talking about change?
Those are good questions. And I hope you’ll ask them as you go through this study. But one thing the Vision and Design Team hopes is that you will recognize Franktown Church in this description and realize that one thing that characterizes churches our size is that they go through certain changes. They can’t stay the same. In order to continue to be faithful, they have to do new things, listen for new voices, search for new visions, and reach new people. Sound familiar?

If we want something we’ve never had before, we’re going to have to do some things that we’ve never done before. We will build on our history. We will still be Franktown Church. But we will be more. If we are gripped by the Holy Spirit we will be going into a new future that we could not have imagined.

God is going to do great things in us and through us yet. I think Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens will be surprised. Because God is reconciling the world to God’s own self. Christ is making all things new. We are walking, not according to flesh, but according to the Spirit. The only question is: Are we going to let that knowledge change us? It’s better the world know this now. Who you gonna tell? Thanks be to God.

[i] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/542154
[ii] Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great, excerpted on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18503995/site/newsweek/page/9/

Vision in a Sailcloth

Acts 11:1-18
The apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles were also receiving the word of God. Then Peter came up to Jerusalem and the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them?"
So Peter began to lay an argument before them: "I was in the city of Joppa praying and while in a trance I saw a vision. A vessel, something like a large linen sheet, came down from heaven, lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. In looking at it closely I saw the four-footed beasts of the earth and the wild animals and the reptiles and the birds of the heavens. I heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter, kill and eat.'
“But I said, 'No way, Lord. I have never put common and unclean things into my mouth.'
“But a voice from heaven continued a second time: 'What God has made clean, you must not call common.'
“This happened three times and the whole thing was drawn up into heaven. And look, at that very moment three men appeared at the house where we were, sent from Caesarea to me. The Spirit told me to do with these men without making any distinctions. The came together with me and these six brothers also accompanied me to the house of the man. He told us that he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, the one called Peter. He will give words for you through which you and all your household will be saved.'
“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit embraced them just as it did us in the beginning. I remembered the words of the Lord as he said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' Now if God gave the same gift to them as to we who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I have the power to hinder God?"
When they heard this they praised God: "So God has also given the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

There are three important questions that we have to answer as individuals and as a church. The three questions are: Who are you going to eat with? Who are you going to be embraced by? And who are you going to follow? Now none of those is grammatically correct, and I know that there are some of us who care very deeply about that sort of thing, so let me rephrase the questions: With whom are you gonna eat? By whom are you going to be embraced? And whom are you going to follow? But really, don’t get too caught up in the whos and the whoms because the real question of today is: What are we going to be? Are we going to be people who are content or resigned to be what we have always been? Or do we really believe we can be transformed? Do we really trust that God can change us? Do we really understand what it means to be claimed by the Risen Christ? What are we going to be?

These are real questions for us because of the scripture reading that we have from Acts this morning. The story of Peter and his vision is one that was very challenging for the early Christian community to hear. It was a story that pushed them to think about the implications of Jesus’ resurrection. Now that Jesus was raised from the dead, it meant that things had changed, but they weren’t ready for all the change that was coming. It meant that they would now be a larger family that included not just Jews but also others – Greeks, Romans, Gentiles. It’s not always very comfortable when your family grows.

There’s the story about a young woman who brought her boyfriend over to dinner with her parents one night. They were planning to get married and as dinner ended the young woman’s mother asked her to help clear away the dishes. Then she went to her husband and said, “Find out what you can about this boy.”

So the father went with the boyfriend into the other room and he said, “So, what do you do?”

The young man said, “I’m studying philosophy and theology.”

This worried the father a little bit so he said, “Well, you know, my daughter is used to having enough a house and food to eat and to having the basic necessities of life. How will you take care of her?”

The young man said, “I will study hard and God will provide.”

“Well, how are you going to afford a beautiful engagement ring like she deserves?”

The young man said, “I will concentrate on my studies and God will provide.”

“And what about the children you may have? How will you take care of them?”

Again the young man said, “Don’t worry, sir, God will provide.”

After they had left, the mother asks the father, “Well, what did you find out?”

The father says, “He has no job and no plans, but the good news is he thinks I’m God.”[i]

It’s not always comfortable when your family grows and it wasn’t comfortable for the church. Because the problem with an open door is that…it’s open. And because it’s open, God can send anybody through it. Anybody. Even people we might not think ought to be coming through it. And not only that, but God will send us through it to meet the world out there.

Last week we talked about how Peter was living out his calling after Jesus’ resurrection. Peter was the leader of the Christian community, the one everybody was looking to for guidance on what they should do in this confusing period when Jesus was no longer physically present with them. Peter seemed to be picking up where Jesus left off – healing people, even raising people from the dead, like Tabitha in the story we had last week.

But even Peter was going to be challenged. Even Peter had some things to learn. Following the miracle with Tabitha, he stayed in Joppa, a seaside town some distance from Jerusalem. He was staying with a man named Simon the Tanner and while he was there he went up on the rooftop to pray, which would not have been as hard for him as it sounds to us who live with sloped roofs. The houses of Peter’s day were flat-roofed and many people used them as a regular part of the house, just as many people around the world still do.

So he was up on the roof praying when he begins to get hungry. I can imagine that he was starting to have images of his favorite foods. Clam fritters and collard greens with a ham hock, yeast rolls and watermelon rind pickles. Hey, you have your images and I have mine! Only this is certainly not what Peter was imagining. Or at least he would never admit to imagining this, because at least some of that would have been off-limits to him.

Good Jews did not eat shellfish or pork. These were considered unclean foods because of the Law of Moses. You can look it up right there in Leviticus chapter 11. Things you shall not eat: On land the no-nos are things like the pig, the hare, the rock badger, and the camel. Anybody been sneaking camel burgers lately? I remember when I was growing up there was a fast-food place in Charlottesville called Caravan, Home of the Humpburger. I think by these rules it would have not been kosher. Actually, greasy as that place was, I think by ANY rules it wouldn’t have been kosher! But then you also could not eat things taken from the water that did not have fins or scales. So fish were O.K. but jellyfish, clams, oysters, shrimp…these were out. And the list goes on. You can’t eat osprey or eagles. Bats are out. Locusts and grasshoppers are…O.K. Go for it. But there were also other rules about when unclean animals came into contact with other things. For instance if you had a gecko, which, even though it does television commercials, is unclean…if you had a gecko that died and fell got into a vessel – like an earthen jar, you would have to break the jar. Dead geckos were expensive even if they can save you 15% on your car insurance. You had to make or buy a new jar if they touched one.

All of this seems very archaic to us now but it was a powerful part of the Jewish faith, and still is for many observant Jews. It was a way of expressing that God has intentions for those who are set-apart. The children of Israel were supposed to look different from the rest of the world. They were supposed to make distinctions between things God wants and things God doesn’t want. It was not just in their beliefs; it was also in their daily life. All that they did, all that they ate, was supposed to be done in mindfulness of what God would have them do. They were a holy people and one of the ways they expressed this holiness was through these food laws.

Jesus had started to upset this understanding, though. He had started to break the rules. When some religious leaders chastised him for healing on the Sabbath, a day that had been set apart for rest, he told them that they had their priorities wrong. They were taking God’s gift of the Sabbath and making a rule out of it that took precedence over compassion. When they chastised him for letting his disciples take grain from a field on the Sabbath, he said, “Sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around.” When they questioned him for hanging out with sinners and foreigners and women, he reminded them that God’s love had no limits. Then he showed it by going to the cross. Jesus had already opened the door to change, but the disciples had still not taken it all in.

But I was talking about Peter on the roof, hungry. Well, he has a vision and in this vision there is something like a sailcloth coming down from the heavens. I say it was “something like a sailcloth” or a big sheet because it has four corners, but the first word that is used to describe it is “a vessel.” This is something meant to hold something. You put things in this thing.
What is in this thing is a collection of animals. Peter sees that there are four-footed animals and birds and reptiles. It’s a whole zoo there. Then he hears a voice that says, “Peter, get up, kill and eat.”

Peter’s first reaction is pretty understandable. “You know, I was hungry, God, but this isn’t what I had in mind. A little falafel would have been just fine. I didn’t think I’d actually have to go out and slaughter something. And from the looks of things on that sheet or whatever it is, there are some things on there that I’m not supposed to eat. I think I even see a gecko on there. You know we’re going to have to burn this sheet. I can’t eat from that.”

Peter must have thought this was the right answer. Just like he must have thought it was the right answer when he told Jesus at the Last Supper, “You’re not going to wash my feet.” This may be the new age inaugurated by Jesus Christ, but he was still a good Jewish boy.

God, it seems, was not playing by the same old rules, though. “Who are you, Peter,” the voice says, “to call profane something that God has made clean?” Something was changing and it is taking Peter awhile to see it. Everything takes Peter awhile. He does things in threes. Three times he denied knowing Jesus. Three times he had to profess his love for Jesus when he asked, “Peter, do you love me?” Three times he argues with this voice before the thing is taken back up into the heavens.

Then there are three guys who show up. Not in the vision, but at the door of the house where Peter was staying. Representatives of Cornelius, an Italian soldier who had feared God and who had been on the edge of the Jewish community. Cornelius had had a vision, too, and he wanted Peter to come to Caesarea, where he lived. So Peter went.

When he got the house the first thing Peter said was, “I’m not supposed to be here. Jews do not associate with Gentiles, much less visit in their homes. But I had a vision and in it God told me that I shouldn’t make that distinction anymore. What God calls clean, who am I to call it unclean?”

Cornelius shared his vision, too. Then Peter told the story of Jesus and how it revealed that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” [Acts 10:34-35]. The house was filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit and Peter baptized Cornelius and his whole family.

It was a great day…a great event. But Peter had some explaining to do. When he got back to the other disciples in Jerusalem, they had a lot of questions. Mainly they were disturbed that Peter had accepted hospitality from a man who had not been circumcised – the sign that the Jews had used to mark their being set apart. “You went to his house and you ate with them,” they said.

That’s when Peter pulls out his own questions…the same ones I started this sermon with. I hear these questions in his response to them. “Who are you going to eat with? I had a vision and in that vision God told me to eat food we had called profane. Cornelius had a vision and God told him to welcome me to his table. Both of these were from God. How could we not eat together? If God wants to prepare a table where all are welcome, God will do that.

“Who are we going to be embraced by? Cornelius’ household was embraced by the Holy Spirit.” That’s what the word is in the Greek. Sometimes it gets translated as the Holy Spirit “fell upon” them, but it fell upon them in order to embrace them. The word is used in other places to describe hugging. When Paul heals a young man who fell out of a window, he first embraces him. That’s what the Holy Spirit wanted to do with these disciples. That’s what the Holy Spirit wanted to do with Cornelius and his family. The Holy Spirit wanted to embrace them and there were some disciples who couldn’t handle that.

Finally Peter asks the question, “Who are we going to follow? We left our fishing nets and our tax tables behind to go walk behind Jesus. We went places where folks said we shouldn’t have gone. We developed relationships with people that folks looked down on. We upset tables in the Temple. And we saw Jesus turn the world upside down. Didn’t I say, ‘Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ [John 6:68]. Are we going to stop following God now? When it’s obvious that God is opening the door to the Gentiles and to the rest of the world, are we going to stop following Jesus now? And who are we fooling if we try to? If God is giving the Gentiles the same gifts that God gave us, who are we to hinder God?”

If the disciples were listening they might have remembered a story Jesus had told them about a man who did a foolish thing. It was an incredibly foolish thing to do. Before he died, he split up his estate and gave a large share of it to his youngest son, who was a pretty reckless, immature kid. He didn’t follow the rules. He didn’t know how to love his dad or to honor him.

So what he did next was pretty predictable. He goes off to a far country and blows the whole wad. Spends it all on wine, women, song, slot machines and video games. (He would have spent it on the last two if there had been such things.) He ends up broke and slopping pigs – pigs! Unclean – remember?

But he comes back determined to offer himself as a slave to his father, just so that he can had a minimal existence. But while he was still far off, his father comes out to meet him. This is really extraordinary how of the rails this father is! The father comes out to meet him and falls upon him, embraces him – yes, it’s the same word. And kills a fatted calf so that everyone can eat with this son. And everyone goes along with this ridiculous scenario because it’s the landowner who’s doing it. If the father wants to squander his estate this way, that’s the way it’s done. If the father wants to welcome this wastrel back and throw him a party, that’s what happens. And they all go.

Except the older son. Who stands on the sidelines and grumbles. Who will not give in to the father’s foolishness. Who will not forget the way things are supposed to happen. Who will stand apart and refuse to be embraced and refuse to sit down to eat with his brother and refuse to follow where the father is leading. Who will not love because the kind of love the father offers is too great to understand or control.

Do you think maybe the disciples remembered that story as Peter told them about his vision and his experience with Cornelius? I think they must have because after he shares this with them they say, “So God has given the repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles, too.” How amazing. Because when we find our place in the story we may start as the older brother, but we’ll never find our way to the table unless we recognize ourselves as the younger brother, too, making our way into God’s love out of grace and grace alone.

Who are you going to eat with? Who are you going to be embraced by? Who are you going to follow? We are going to be challenged to answer those questions as we move into the future. Many of us are going to be reading The Myth of the 200 Barrier over the next few weeks. It’s going to challenge us to think about who we are and how we structure ourselves for ministry. But I hope it also challenges us to think about these three questions because they lie behind everything we do.

When we come to this table we are coming with all kinds of people. Around this table are people from all times and places who have found life in Jesus Christ. Here are Peter and Cornelius. Here are Julian of Norwich and Eleanor Nicolls and Linwood Walker and all the saints who have preceded us. Here are refugees in the Sudan and children in Iraq and soldiers in the field who are searching for God in the most difficult situations. Who are we going to eat with?

Who are we going to be embraced by? Will we huddle with our fears against the darkness, or will we allow ourselves to be embraced by God’s Spirit that casts out fear?

Who are we going to follow? Because God is going to do great things. God is going to prepare a feast. God is going to change the world. And we are invited to follow. Thanks be to God.

[i] Adapted from beliefnet.com, http://www.beliefnet.com/dailyjoke/DailyJoke.aspx?QID=9300

Holding onto the Garments for Dear Life

An anatomy class model in a dumpster

Acts 9:36-43
Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. And it happened in those days that she became ill and died. They bathed her and put her in an upstairs room.
Since Lydda was near Joppa and they had heard that peter was there, the disciples sent to two men to him pleading, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose up and went with them.
Upon arriving they led him into the upstairs room. All the widows approached him, crying and showing him garments and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. Peter sent all of them out, got down on his knees and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, rise up!”
She opened her eyes, looked at Peter, and sat up. He gave her his hand and raised her up. He called to the saints and the widows and present her alive.
Now this became known throughout the whole of Joppa and many came to believe in the Lord. Then he remained for some days in Joppa with a certain Simon, a tanner.

I’ve got a confession to make this morning and I know that some of you are going to be a little put-off by it. The confession is this: I have a pretty low tolerance for craft materials. Now I recognize that I have to keep that to myself most of the time. I live with some very crafty people and I know that there are some very crafty people in this church. You can do amazing things with craft supplies and it’s because I know this that I just kind of bite my tongue about this feeling of mine. But the truth is…I have a hard time seeing the potential in craft materials.

The first time I went into one of those big craft supply stores – Michael’s or some such place – I thought to myself, “The people who came up with this place are genius. They’re making money by just selling aisle after aisle of junk!” Suzanne, of course, fell in love with the place.

But that feeling has never really left me. So I have to check myself on those rare occasions when I get into clean-up mode. I’m liable to throw out some very valuable Styrofoam or knick-knacks that would otherwise make their way into a great creation.

I guess what I’m saying is: When I see something like this clump of yarn my first impulse is not to see a prayer shawl but a hairball. It takes the eye of someone who knows the potential of this yarn to help it become what it should be. Something beautiful is in here.

There’s a message in that for us today. You came in here today with a few hairballs on your mind. You came in here thinking that there are a few places in your life or a few places in the world that God just hasn’t quite sorted out. You came in here thinking that those places might best be left alone because as much as you profess to believe in life, you just don’t know how God can do anything with them.

“What’s God going to do with a car bombing in Iraq? What’s God going to do with the grief of a parent who lost a child on the Tech campus last week? What’s God going to do with this disease I’m fighting? What’s God going to do with this addiction I can’t control? What’s God going to do with this bad habit I can’t break? What’s God going to do with this deep longing in my heart? What’s God going to do with this fixation in my mind? What’s God going to do with this emptiness in my soul? What’s God going to do with my parents, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my kids? What’s God going to do with all of that? It’s best not to show that here. It’s best not to pull that out because it’s just too messy, even for God. It’s best not to talk about it because I don’t know if I can trust God with it. I’ll just play it safe today. I’ll just be guarded today. I know it’s a healing service, but, hey, let’s be realistic. What’s going to change if I let God have this hairball to work with? I’ll just keep it to myself.” Oh, have I got a message for you today.

And it all begins at a seaside town on the Mediterranean. Joppa. The Hebrew word for beauty. Thirty-five miles west of Jerusalem, this is one of the oldest port cities in the world. Today it is a place of sidewalk cafes and boardwalks along the waterfront, but in ancient days it was the place through which Solomon brought the cedars of Lebanon to build his temple to the Lord. It was the place to which Jonah fled to catch a ship for Tarshish so that he wouldn’t have to follow God’s calling to be a prophet. Jonah had a whale of a time.

But there is another Bible story about Joppa. It seems that in this beautiful seaside town there was a disciple of Jesus by the name of Tabitha. We don’t know much about her. The book of Acts tells us that she was full of good works and acts of charity. Obviously something within her had been responding to Jesus’ call. Her life had been transformed. We know this much about her. We also know that she was a maker of garments.

So one day Tabitha became ill and died. The women who knew her and loved her followed the custom of the day. They bathed her body and placed it in an upstairs room. The body wouldn’t be there long. The custom was to bury the body as soon as possible. Probably by sundown they would lay her to rest.

But there were some other disciples living in Joppa who weren’t content to let the story end according to custom. That might be the way it had always happened before, but they were now living on this side of Jesus’ resurrection and they couldn’t shake the idea that maybe now things should be different. Word had started to spread through Joppa that Peter was in the area. He had just healed man up the road in Lydda – old Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years. He had just said to the man, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you! Get up and make your bed.” And just like that the man had done it. His bed was rolled up in the corner now.

So these disciples decided to go up to Lydda and get Peter. If anybody represented the power of Jesus Christ it was Peter. Peter may have denied Jesus three times, but he was also the one whom Jesus had singled out and said, “Peter, you are my rock, and I will build my church on you.” Peter was the one who ran to the tomb on that Easter morning to see if the rumors were true. Peter was the one whom Jesus had taken aside and said, “Feed my sheep.”

“Peter,” the two men sent from Joppa said to him. “Peter, you have to come now. There’s no time to lose. Please.” And the three of them were off.

It was such a familiar scene. The prophets Elijah and Elisha had faced this one before. A dead body in an upper room awaiting resuscitation. Jesus had faced it before. Going into the room where a young girl lay dead, he had sent out everyone but the parents and commanded the girl to get up, which she did. You just know how this story is going to end when Peter shows up.

But it doesn’t make the scene any less poignant. A group of widows had gathered, a group familiar with death and used to the rituals of mourning. But Luke, the gospel writer who also wrote Acts, gives us a detail that is new. The widows are not just weeping, they are passing around garments and clothes that Tabitha had woven. “Here, Peter, look at this. See how skillful she was.” “Here, Peter, look at this. Look at the weave here, how much care she took to get it right.” “Here, Peter, look at this. Look at this beautiful cloth. Oh, Peter, it’s all that we have left.” You can see them running their fingers over the clothes…their fingers which are instruments of memory, recalling the life of the woman who wove and wore these clothes….they hold onto these garments as if for dear life.

You can hear the echo of the voices that spoke to the father of the little girl who came to Jesus for her healing. “The girl is dead…why trouble the teacher further?” Tabitha is dead. Why ask Peter for more that what we have? Why ask God? What we have is this cloth. What we have are these threads.

Peter is not content with the cloth, though. He doesn’t even seem to be interested. He sends the women out and he gets down on his knees beside the lifeless body. He prays. Maybe he prays loud prayers of deep anguish. Maybe he is silent, remembering other cloth. Those linen wrappings rolled up in the place where Jesus’ body lay. Aeneas’ bed rolled up in a corner. The curtain of the temple ripped in two to symbolize God’s holiness unleashed in a world of death, no longer contained in the expected places.

Whatever he prays, he finally turns to the body and says very simply, “Tabitha, get up.” And because the world is a different place now…because life is something that the disciples have come to expect now…because Jesus has walked out of the tomb…because the tomb is empty now…because when God desires it even death cannot be obeyed…because Tabitha has things yet to do and the world has wonders yet to see…because of all of these things, Tabitha opens her eyes, looks at Peter and sits up. No shouts. No fuss. The miracle is not for her. Tabitha had already been experiencing the eternal life Jesus promised. The miracle is for those in the next room. Peter takes her hand and helps her stand.

Then he calls in the others – the saints and the widows, Acts says – and presents her alive. Walter Brueggemann, the great biblical scholar, makes a great deal of who this audience is. “The wonder is witnessed and attested only by saints and widows,” he says. “What a pair! The saints are those who did not flee from the smell of death. The widows are those who live every day in their vulnerability, at the edge of death. They are the only witnesses. The non-saints, the ones who fear death, were gone and did not stay to see the miracle. The anti-widows, the ones who work death on the weak, were not there. It takes a certain kind of witness to see the newness! They stayed in the chamber of death and were there for the surprising gift of new life.”[i]

Do you see what’s going on here? New life is breaking out because the church – Peter – was not content to live out of the old ways…the expected ways. The church – Peter – was not going to hold back anything from God’s power for fear of looking foolish…for fear of being disappointed…for fear of being caught up short. Who does what he does here? Who goes into a room with a dead body and expects new life? Who looks at leftover clothes and expects that they might still have a purpose?

Nobody does this. Nobody who lives in the world you and I live in. But when the church has been at its best it has always believed that the rules of death and destruction and dissipation do not apply to God. And when the church has believed that it has been at the center of history, transforming the world, reconciling people to God, and bringing new life where there was none.

Who would have believed that a motley group of disciples who scattered at the death of their teacher, and huddled in fear behind locked doors as he lay in the tomb would, in the space of a generation, rock the foundations of the Roman Empire? Who would have believed that Irish monks living on the edge of the world would climb into boats made out of animal hide and sticks and cross the waters to bring the message of Jesus Christ back to Europe when the Dark Ages fell across the land? Who would have believed that the strong walls of racial prejudice would fall across the United States because of white and black people riding buses together and sitting at lunch counters many of them because they had heard a different message in their Bibles than that being professed by the enforcers of segregation? Who would have believed that Methodists, traveling on horseback and meeting in small groups would transform the wilderness regions of this country, even places like the Eastern Shore, into places where God’s word would be heard? Who would have believed that farmers at Franktown Church would hear a challenge from a visiting preacher and challenge him back so that the Potato Project of the Society of St. Andrews would be started and feed hungry people throughout the country? Who would have believed that we’d be sending people to Russia, mosquito nets to Africa, money to cancer research, prayer shawls to the sick, and baby supplies for Hispanic migrant families all at the same time? Who does these sorts of things? We do, brothers and sisters! When Christians see an empty tomb they have to stop believing that there are places that are off-limits to God. When Christians see a Risen Lord they have to stop thinking that there are places God won’t go. When Christians see that dead people are walking around they have to believe that maybe they can to.

Someone was reminding me this week of the story of a church in a small town that was very upset when a bar opened up right next door to the church. Right away the church began to pray that God would do something about this problem – that a place that could lead people astray would be taken away. Every week they prayed that God would burn the place down.

Then one night, the bar burned down. Everybody in the church was joyful. But the owner of the bar sued the church. Took them to court. The judge thought it was an unusual case, but he accepted it. The judge asked the bar owner why he had brought suit and he said, “Well, they prayed that my business would burn down and then it did.”

The judge called the representatives of the church up and they said, “Judge, you can’t hold us liable for this. All we did was pray. We didn’t set a match to the place.”

The judge finally threw out the case but when she did she chastised the church. “Seems to me,” she said, “that the bar owner believed in the power of prayer more than the church did.”

That’s who we are at our worst. When the church holds back because it is afraid of being fully implicated….when we live our lives as if God can only be trusted with what we can’t handle by our own reason and our own abilities…when we see parts of the world or parts of our lives that seem broken beyond repair and we hide them away and do not offer them to God…when we think, despite our best words to the contrary, that there is no ultimate hope, no ultimate redemption, no ultimate transformation…when we doubt that love is truly the engine at the center of the universe…when we go through the motions of faith…when we ask for God’s blessing but don’t really expect it…when we look at our wounds full on and decide that they’re just too deep for even God to handle…when we sit with the mourners and handle the clothes and admire the weave but notice all those holes…well, then we are holding out on God and denying the victory that Christ has won.

I will admit, because it happens to me, that there are times when I keep saying the words because I don’t know what else to say. There are times when I say, with the man who spoke to Jesus, “Yes, of course, I believe, but God, help my unbelief.” There are times when I doubt and times when I hold out and times when I shrink from the promise and fall back on the reasonable way that the world works. It seems much safer that way. Why risk being disappointed? Why risk putting myself on the line? Why risk appearing foolish or naïve or Pollyanna or weak or any of those things we sometimes wonder about?

I admit to all of that just like I admit to looking at craft supplies and seeing junk. Like I admit to looking a ball of yarn and seeing only a jumbled bunch of thread. But God does not look at us or the world that way. God looks at us and the world and says, “I can do something with that.” God looks at us and the world and says, “I can redeem that.” God looks at us and the world and says, “Yes, it’s a mess but I can’t make it beautiful. Yes, it’s vast and devastating and heartbreaking, but it is also rich, and amazing and fearfully and wonderfully made. There is no part of that person or that earth that I did not create. There is no wasted spot and there are no spare, leftover pieces. There is no gift that will not be used and there is no hurt that will not go unhealed. There is no being or person on the face of that planet that I do not love and value with all of my heart. I have given them everything I have. I have given them life and breath and I have given them a future by giving them myself, but giving them Jesus Christ.”

We have been given the gift of Jesus. We have been given the gift of Jesus! We have been given the gift of a God who did not withhold from us anything – including God’s own self. Did you know that you were loved like that? Did you know that the ruler of the whole universe came into the world for you? Did you know that Jesus didn’t hold anything back? That he wasn’t afraid to look weak or foolish or naïve? That he believed that whatever we ask for in prayer God will receive? That he heals? Still.

So why are we holding back? Don’t you know that you are loved and gifted beyond all measure and reason? Give those hairballs to God. I can’t say what God will do with them. But I know that there is potential even there. Thanks be to God.

[i] Walter Brueggemann, “Blogging toward Sunday,” The Christian Century 4/24/2007, http://www.theolog.org/blog/2007/04/blogging_toward_1.html