Rebekah's Choice

Mary Karr was seven years old when her mother had “an episode.” She lived in a Gulf Coast oil town in Texas. It was 1961. At seven you don’t realize that things could be different than they are. You’re still learning what this wide, wonderful world is all about. But Mary Karr’s mother was having difficulties – a mental breakdown.

She was a smart woman. An artist. But also a struggling woman. So one night, while her daddy was out at a bar, Mary’s mama pulled her and her sister out onto the lawn of their small house and started piling up things. Things like her artwork and Mary’s springy hobby horse that she had started to outgrow. Things like their clothes. And she poured gasoline on the pile and it went up in flames. Mary huddled next to her sister and watched her metal horse start to melt.

Then her mom took Mary and her sister inside and sat them in the bedroom while she overturned the kitchen, pouring cutlery onto the floor. She came back into the bedroom and held a knife in the air over her children as she wailed, “Noooo.” Finally, before she did any harm to them, she called for help.

Mary Karr wrote about this episode in her memoir The Liar’s Club which won the National Book Award. She says:

I did know from that night forward that things in my house were Not Right, this despite the fact that the events I have described so far had few outward results. No one ever mentioned the night again. I don’t remember any subsequent home visits from any kind of social worker or concerned neighbor. Dr. Boudreaux seemed sometimes to minister to my health with an uncharacteristic tenderness. And neighbors dragged my sister and me to catechism classes and Vacation Bible School and to various hunting camps, never mentioning the fact that our family never reciprocated. I frequently showed up on doorsteps at suppertime; foraging, Daddy called it….But no one ever failed to hand me a plate, though everybody knew that I had plenty to eat at home, which wasn’t always true for the families I popped in on.

The night’s major consequences for me were internal. The fact that my house was Not Right metastasized into the notion that I myself was somehow Not Right, or that my survival in the world depended on my constant vigilance against various forms of Not-Rightness.[i]

You ever had that sense? You know, that maybe your house is Not Right. That maybe, somehow, because of that you are Not Right. That maybe you will only be able to survive in the world because of your constant efforts to fight off the Not-Rightness. There’s a lot that’s Not Right with the world.

But we don’t talk about such things at church, do we? Here it can seem that all families are perfect. Or maybe it’s like Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor’s fictional village in Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. We may be guilty of giving the impression that there is no room for the Not-Rightness of our lives. But when we speak truth we know that there is a lot that is Not Right.

The Bible knows this. The Bible speaks this. Even in stories like today where Isaac meets Rebekah and it seems like all is right with the world.

Isaac, however, has his own memories. He was the child of promise, born to Abraham and Sarah when they were both in their later years. His name meant “laughter,” one of God’s little jokes. For, you see, when his birth was announced by three heavenly visitors to Abraham and Sarah’s tent, Sarah began to laugh behind the tent flap. “How absurd! A baby at my age?” she thought. Abraham himself had fallen down on his face laughing at the news once before. But God had the last laugh. The child was born and his name was Laughter – Isaac.

Isaac was the only son of Abraham, whose name meant “father of many nations.” Except he was not the only son. He was certainly Sarah’s only son. Certainly the one God had tapped as the inheritor of the promise. But there was his half-brother Ishmael, born to Abraham’s servant, Hagar. There were the fights between Sarah and Hagar. There was the day when Abraham finally sent Hagar and the child, Ishmael, off into the wilderness. If God had not intervened then, they both would have died.

Then there was the day that Abraham got Isaac up early in the morning for a trip. On the donkey they took with them Isaac saw split wood. Signs that they might be making an offering. Two servants came along. For three days they traveled, Abraham looking always toward the mountains, like he was waiting for a sign. Abraham taking the lead, looking forward, silent. The boy Isaac following behind. The split wood rubbing together on the donkey’s flanks.

Three days they traveled and then Abraham stopped. He told the servants to stay. “The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.” Abraham took the wood from the donkey and put in Isaac’s arms to carry. Abraham himself took a knife.

Isaac finally broke the silence. “Father?”

“Yes, my son.”

“We have flint and wood to make a fire. But where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

Did Abraham take a long time in answering? Or did he just tell it out? “Son, God will see to it that there’s a sheep for the offering.” And they kept on walking.

Abraham finally came to stop and built an altar. He took the wood from Isaac and laid it out on the altar. Then he took rope and he tied up his son Isaac and laid him out on the wood. He raised an infirm hand to the sky and in it Isaac could see the knife flashing in the desert sun, ready to come down upon him. Was it in his head? Was it from his father’s lips? Or was it from the very skies itself that the word came? A long “Noooooo.” It could not be that Isaac should end his days this way. God must provide another way. And there in a thicket was a ram caught by its horns. The ram became the sacrifice.

But what must the journey home have been like? Did Abraham tell his son about the command he heard from heaven? The command to offer his son, his only son, as a sacrifice? Did he tell the boy how he agonized over it? How he resisted it? How he argued with God like he had for the sake of the people of Sodom? Did he tell him that he knew all along that God would provide? That in the end, somehow, God would come through?

Or did they walk back down the mountain in a horrible silence? Did Isaac know that from this moment on he had now inherited the promise from a wild and holy God who was always going to leave him unsettled and always at risk? And how many nights did Isaac fall asleep with the vision of his father holding aloft a knife in his trembling hand over his trembling throat?

Did they ever tell Sarah? The Bible doesn’t say. Perhaps they did because the next thing that happens in the biblical story is that Sarah dies. She was 127 years old. But if she heard the tale of the sacrifice on the mountain it might surely have hastened her demise.

The almost-sacrifice of Isaac is told to us as a lesson in faith. Faith even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when it is affront to our reason and our heart. Abraham is blessed because of his faith that God would provide. But faith like this doesn’t lead to harmony or safety. It doesn’t make the story of God’s people a Pollyanna tale of good things happening to good people.

In fact, from this point on in Genesis, God does not intervene nearly as much into the lives of Abraham’s family members. There are prayers and promises, dreams and blessings that all remind us that God is there – but faith from here to the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3 is not lived out as a drama between an intervening God and an obedient people. Faith from here to the burning bush is ordinary people – even Not Right people – struggling to get by and to make sense of the world. And meanwhile the promise of God to make of Abraham and his descendents a great people is coming true. Which makes the time between the mountain of sacrifice and the mountain of the burning bush a good model for our times – as ordinary people like us – even Not Right people – struggle to get by and make sense of the world.

So where do we go from here? What happens to a family after a trauma like this? After Sarah dies, Abraham finds a suitable burial site for her. But he knows that he will follow soon behind. So he called his senior servant to his side and made him swear an oath. “Put your hand beneath my thigh and swear by God that you will get a wife for my son Isaac from our homeland.” They were living in a strange land. Though God had promised this land to them, they were just sojourners. So Abraham sent the servant back for a wife from his own people.

The servant gathered up ten camels for the long journey back to the old country. When he came to a well in that far land he got down off of his camels. He had them all kneel by the well. And he prayed a prayer to the God of his master, Abraham. He prayed that, when the young women of the town came out to get water, he would say to the right girl, “Lower your jug and give me a drink.” And she would answer, “Here is something for you and let me also water your camels.” A woman who would water your camels – now that would make a fitting wife for Isaac!

Well, you can guess what happened next. A girl came out to the well with a water jug on her shoulder. She was a stunning beauty. You can almost hear the servant thinking, “Let her be the one!” She lowered the jug into the well and drew up the water. The servant ran to he and said, “May I have a sip from your jug?”

“Yes, of course, drink,” she said. “And…[wait for it!]…I’ll get water for your camels, too.”

The man watched in awe as she dipped the jug ten more times for each of the thirsty camels. Then he pulled out gifts – a gold nose ring and two arm bracelets. He gave them to her. And because he was from the Eastern Shore he started to ask about her family. “Whose daughter are you? Is there room for us to come stay the night?”

Then the “aha!” moment as he learns that she is of the family of Abraham’s brother. Her brother, Laban, welcomes the servant in along with all of his camels and the other servants who were with him. They bring food to eat, but the servant won’t eat until he tells the whole tale. He ends by saying, “God has led me to your door to get a wife for my master’s son. Now, tell me what you are going to do.”

They respond by saying, “Yes, yes. This must be of God. Yes, yes. Of course, you must take Rebekah to be married to Isaac. But let her stay another ten days before you go.”

The servant resisted. He was ready to return. So they bring in Rebekah and we finally hear her speak. How she felt about the deal being made about her, we don’t know. But at this moment when she can make some sort of statement she chooses to go. “I’m ready to go,” she says.

So off they go, back to the strange land and there’s a little Hollywood moment as they arrive. Isaac is out in the field at the end of the day mediating. He sees camels coming across in the fading light of day. Rebekah looks up and sees Isaac, though she doesn’t know who he is. She slips down off the side of her camel. “Who is that man out in the field coming toward us?” she asks.

“That is my master,” says the servant.

She slips her veil over her face, according to the custom. And though the text doesn’t tell us this, I’m sure they ran in slow motion across the field until they met as the music rose to a high crescendo. Isaac took Rebekah as his wife and he loved her. The text does say that. The credits begin to roll.

Then there is the last line to the 24^th chapter of Genesis. The line that says, “So Isaac found comfort after his mother’s death.” And here’s the thing we need to hear in this passage: Love stories don’t take place in isolation. They take place in the midst of a hundred other things. They take place in the wake of a traumatic death. They take place as people move from their home. They take place in the midst of conflicted families. They take place with rich people and with servants. They take place for men and for women.

The story of Isaac and Rebekah can seem like a quaint little biblical interlude. But it happens in the shadow of so many things. It happens in the shadow of God’s promise that the stars of the heavens and the sand of the sea can’t begin to describe the bounty of the future. It happens in the shadow of children sent off into the desert to survive by their own wits and by the angel of God. It happens in the shadow of a knife in a trembling hand that means faith and risk.

The stories of Genesis that the Jewish people and now we in the Christian Church look back on are stories of trauma and drama. They remind us that we live on a knife’s edge. On one side of the cut is the danger of human choice – we always have this choice. The choice to say “Yes” to life. To be engaged in the world. To take on for ourselves the responsibility to act in this world as we believe God is calling us to act. We can’t shirk our role in this world.

On the other side of the cut is the promise of God’s presence. Even when it is unseen. Even when we are shackled by the traumas of the past and the things that have been done to us. Even when we can’t see God’s new day, God is already there in it, bringing it to new life.

And where do we see that in this story? In a girl with a water jug. In the receiving and giving of gifts. In the hospitality of strangers. And in Rebekah’s choice to say, “I’m ready to go.”

There’s a lot that’s Not Right about this world. You may believe there’s a lot that’s Not Right about you. You may believe that the only thing standing between you and damnation is an eternal struggle against the Not-Rightness of the world. But you’d be wrong. There’s also something terribly, terribly right with the universe. And God will not rest until all is made Right. Thanks be to God.

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[i] Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club, [Penguin: New York, 1995], pp. 9-10.

A Love Song For All That Will Not Die

A Love Song for All That Will Not Die
June 18, 2011
Virginia United Methodist Annual Conference

I went to the Eastern Shore in 2005 as a result of three things:
a mission trip with college students from the Wesley Foundation at UVA during a freakishly cold Spring Break
the appointment system
and my own big mouth, because it was on that mission trip, as I was sitting down to dinner at Camp Occohannock on the Bay with the then-District Superintendent Jim Hewitt, that I found myself saying, "If you have any openings here, I'd like to be considered."
Two weeks later the move was underway.

Like most things in my life in the Virginia Annual Conference, (and I've got a long history here), I didn't know what I was doing when I got into it. I had no clue what the move was going to involve for my family or for me. I didn't even really know what the Eastern Shore was like. Sometimes it doesn't even show up on maps. People think of it as the end of the earth. Starbucks hasn't even discovered this place yet and they are everywhere. When colleagues heard that the bishop was sending me there they said, "What did you do?"

But friends, let me tell you something, and as Christians you should know this. When somebody tells you that something is dead, be careful. When somebody tells you that that there is no life in this place, be careful because there might be an empty tomb. When somebody tells you that there's a valley of dry bones and a voice says, "Mortal, can these dry bones live?", be careful. When there's a people locked in slavery and a man by a burning bush says, "I can't take that word of freedom back to Egypt," be careful. When there's a promise with no heirs, don't laugh like Sarah behind the tent flap when the promise is repeated. Be careful because this God we proclaim is in the resurrection business.

A few months ago - on Groundhog Day to be exact - I was going back to the Shore across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel - that 17 mile link between Virginia Beach and the Shore. I had been visiting in the hospital across the bay. ("Across the bay" is a peculiar Shore expression. It's applied very loosely. From the perspective of the Shore, everything is "across the bay." Virginia Beach. Across the bay. Norfolk. Across the bay. California. Across the bay.)

At any rate, I had been across the bay and I rolled down the window to pay the toll attendant. That's when it hit me. It had been a long, cold winter. You remember those days? A long, cold winter and Groundhog Day was unusually warm. And when I put the window down it all came flooding in to me. There in the air were memories.

Somewhere in the air were camellias and I was immediately back in my grandmother's garden. Somewhere in the air was the salt breeze of an ocean that was shedding its winter coat. Somewhere in the air were creaking swing sets where I pushed our children on a spring day. Somewhere, I swear, there was rain evaporating from a car's hot engine hood. Somewhere in the air were spring days when I would get into my friend Billy Mack's green Datsun pick-up truck and we would skip school to go...well, there were a lot of things in that air. I could smell it.

With all of that rushing in, I suddenly felt glad to be the age that I was. All of that stuff was in the air for me because of my memory, because of the opportunity I had to live life in this creation for this long. And I wrote a poem, because that's what we do on the Eastern Shore. We are all poets. And the end of the poem said:
When at last
I replaced the glass between memory and me
I sighed a lament
for youth
Not that it was lost
but that the young
should be so immune to what was in the air
With no capacity to resurrect moments that have not yet been
they skim the surface of a shallow sea
It is for those with age to know
what ledges and depths these waters conceal
And to be occasionally
assaulted and affirmed
by all that will not die.

I have been a part of the Virginia Annual Conference for a long time. All of my life. For most of that time I have heard laments and moans, cries of panic and accusation, exhortation and recrimination - all because the United Methodist Church was dying. The United Methodist Church is dying. And I have seen the Revealing Christ campaign and Vision 2000 and All Things New and the Call to Action, all of them born out of the same sense that something fundamental is broken in our witness in the world and something fundamental needs to change because the United Methodist Church is dying.

I don't come tonight to challenge that. Something fundamental does need to change. God will call forth the people. God will continue to set the captive free. If we want to be part of that movement of God's Spirit in the world, we surely must make the United Methodist Church a willing and able instrument. I don't come to challenge the notion that we must change else we die. I come to sing a love song for all that will not die.

Tonight we gather to remember. As we read the names of the faithful servants of the church who have died in the last year, with each name, for some of us in this arena, a flood of memories will come back. These are people, ordinary people just like us, who gave themselves in service through the United Methodist Church because they believed that in doing so they were answering the call of God. As we recall them our minds will be drawn to their personalities, their quirks, their unique habits of dress or speech. We remember moments when we encountered them in very personal ways. The tables where we shared meals. The church meetings where we labored together. The worship services where we sang together. And through it all a grace that made them transparent - even in the flesh, even behind the frailties and the failings - they were sometimes transparent so that the love of God could shine through.

As the names are called I will remember. I will remember William A. Wright, Jr. as a man who never failed to ask me as a youth about how things were going at Trinity:Orange, my home church, which was one of his charges as Charlottesville District Superintendent. Carl Ulrich, who made such a huge transition in his life going from being a lawyer to a pastor - don't tell me God can't perform miracles - and who did it with such a deep thoughtfulness and concern for the church. Joseph T. Carson, Jr. who taught me that any challenge in ministry can be called an opportunity.

And I will remember Elmer A. Thompson, who was so unassuming. So quietly dedicated. So deeply self-aware. And who nurtured a generation of young people though the Youth Engaged in Service program, which produced so many great leaders in the church. When I was in the YES program working with children and seniors in the Highland Park area of Richmond, the letters and visits from Elmer put the Apostle Paul to shame. When I remember Elmer I know there are things that will not die as long as I live.

So many others. And each of them spent most of their ministry in service to a denomination that was told continually that it was becoming culturally irrelevant, that it was not what it used to be, not what it should be, that its future was imperiled and its present was a sign of failure. These servants spent most of their lives hearing this message.

And yet. And yet. These people, clergy and lay, touched lives. They called people to new life in Christ and people responded. They were the environment I grew up in. They instilled in others a sense that the roots of the Methodist movement still had vibrancy and vitality. They held up a vision of what the United Methodist Church could be. They created programs that helped new generations see the possibilities of a life that combines works of piety and works of mercy, spirituality and social justice, open hearts, open minds and open doors. They were not mired in a message of death. Oh, some days maybe. We all have them. But we are here today because they carried something from our past to this day.

When I see young people responding to the call. When I see new faith communities springing up in the unlikeliest of places. When I hear the gospel in the tongues of many different lands. When I see the United Methodist Church still alive in the imaginations of people, I know that God used these people to do something that will not die.

Let's return to the Gospel word from Matthew. What must Jesus' followers have heard when he sat down to teach on the mountain? He shared such strange things with them. Things that must have made no sense to them. Happy are those who mourn? What sort of beatitude is that in the face of death? Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The world does not work like that, Jesus. Forgive those who sin against you. On and on this Sermon on the Mount goes with one incredible command following another.

Then, just as they must have been wondering, as once they did, "Who then can be saved?"...just as we begin to wonder, "Who then can do this following Jesus thing?"...Jesus begins a little section on the birds of the air and the lilies of the field interlaced with warnings about anxiety. It's like Bobby McFerrin shows up on the mountainside and begins to sing "Don't worry, be happy." Only there is something more going on here.

"Do not be worried about your life - what you will eat or what you will drink. Don't be worried about what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds, who do not sow. Who do not reap. Who do not gather crops into barns. (Those lazy birds.) And yet God feeds them.

"And look at the lilies. They don't work. They don't spin fabric. (Those lazy flowers.) And yet God clothes them like Solomon in all his glory.

"If God feeds birds. If God adorns the grass of the field which is alive today and is gone tomorrow. What are you worried about?"

It's not a call to laziness. It's not a call to be idle or detached from the world. It's not a call to blissful ignorance. It's a call to let go of the thing that kills. It's a call to let go of our fear.

Fear that God might not mean all those promises about the reign of God among us. Fear that maybe salvation, for myself and for the world, is really not about grace and faith but maybe it really does depend on my artfully-planned and well-executed program. Fear of failure. Doubt of self. Lack of trust. Suspicion of the stranger's knock at the door. Denial of hope. Dark thoughts that maybe death really does have the last word. As if the cross and empty tomb mean nothing to a world come of age, to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer's phrase.

"Forget how incredible it all sounds," Jesus says. "Disengage your disbelief and seek ye first the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness and...you know the rest...all these things shall be added unto you. And don't worry about tomorrow...because tomorrow will care for itself."

I once heard the author and poet Mary Karr talk about her journey into writing. Karr came to her faith later in life through a very gritty path. She has won much acclaim and a National Book Award for her memoirs. Mary Karr said that a turning point for her in finding her voice was when she was talking to a priest. She was struggling with her writing. Struggling to know what to write. And the priest asked her, "Mary, what would you write if you weren't afraid?" What would you write if you weren't afraid? For Karr it was the beginning of becoming who she needed to become as a writer.

What would you do if you weren't afraid? What would our church do if we weren't afraid? How would we face down death if we were not afraid but seeking God?

I don't come tonight to deny the realities of this world that is captivated by death. But I do deny that those realities have the capacity to win the day. I learned that through the witness of so many faithful clergy and lay people who sought God and loved the world and passed it on. Some of them we are remembering tonight. And for all those family members who are here: we share in your grief but also in your gratitude for all that God has done in the lives of your loved ones.

We also share in a confidence that the love for God and the love of God that we knew through these servants is something that does not perish. The word they proclaimed in innumerable sermons. The moments when grace pervaded the space between them and another 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 do not perish 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."

We also share confidence that tomorrow is not worth our fear because tomorrow is assured. God has already been to tomorrow. The cross and the tomb show us the character of tomorrow. Jesus invites us toward tomorrow without anxiety because Jesus knows that the last word is not death.

So we stand - and we do stand - on tomorrow. It's in the air, just like all those memories. Tomorrow is in the air. It smells like camellias and it sounds like creaking children's swings. It is filled with the presence of God and with the voices of all those saints who sing God's praise. Don't worry about tomorrow. Don't face it with fear. Your desire, your truest desire, is for God. And God is faithful.

I come tonight to sing a love song. A love song for this church which, despite itself sometimes, has sustained the faith and hope of people like you and me. A love song for these human servants who, despite themselves sometimes, embodied that faith and hope for people like you and me. I come tonight to sing a love song for all that will not die. Thanks be to God.

Life in the Spirit!

Life in the Spirit
June 12, 2011
Franktown United Methodist Church

What if you threw a party and everybody came? I mean everybody. Earlier this month a teenaged girl named Thessa in Hamburg, Germany decided to have a party to celebrate her 16th birthday. So she did what many people do to announce a party these days, she put it on Facebook. Only when she did it, she forgot to check that the invitation was only for her friends - or the smaller group of her "friends" who were really her friends. (It's so confusing to know who your friends are these days.)

So her invitation to a small party became a public event. By the time she realized what she had done, 15,000 people had responded that they were coming. Thessa and her parents tried to get the word out that it was a mistake. They changed the settings on Facebook. But on the day of 1500 people showed up outside of her small house in Hamburg. They brought homemade cakes and they danced in the streets. They trampled fences and broke some glass. 100 police officers had to be called in to control the crowd. Neighbors were not happy. And Thessa and her parents were not even there. They went elsewhere to celebrate.*

But what if you threw a party and nobody showed up? What if the food was on the table, the drinks iced, the music on, the streamers up, and nobody showed? Something tells me that might be even worse.

Peter and I have been talking about the Holy Spirit for several weeks now and of course today, on Pentecost Sunday, we have to talk about the Holy Spirit. We have talked about how the Spirit inspires us to witness, how the Spirit gives us power to work in the world, how the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ. But maybe we haven't emphasized the most important thing about the Holy Spirit - the Spirit is what gets us to the party!

You might wonder what this Holy Spirit business is all about. After all, do we really need the Spirit when we've got Jesus? It's Jesus who came to liberate us from "slavery to sin and death." It's Jesus who took on the cross. It's Jesus who faced down the devil. It's Jesus who died on that cross and offered us forgiveness for sins. It's Jesus who rose again to show us the way to eternal life. What more is the Spirit going to add to that story?

The Spirit is going to put us into that story. To receive the Holy Spirit is to know that that thing that happened on Calvary? It happened to you. That reconciliation God offers to the world? It was for you. That love that runs the universe? It's here and it's yours and it is not meant to be sitting around unaccessed, unused, unappreciated, unknown. It is meant to be shouted from the rooftops and proclaimed throughout the world.

That's the point of this whole crazy Pentecost experience. You remember where we left the disciples last week. They were watching as Jesus ascended into heaven after promising them that the Holy Spirit would come upon them. Two angels show up and ask them why they are looking up in the skies when there was work to be done in the world.

So the disciples get to work and these early disciples were Methodists. Do you know how I know? They have a committee meeting to nominate a replacement for Judas and then they have gather together in one place for the Festival of Pentecost.

And the Spirit breaks out on them and there is the sound of violent, rushing wind, and there are tongues of fire and the whole place is an uproar. The disciples start speaking in other languages. People from all over the world are there and they hear the disciples praising God in their own languages. There were people there from Cappadocia and they hear the disciples speaking in Cappadocian. There were people from Egypt and they hear them speaking Egyptian. The Elamites say, "Hey, they're speaking Elamite." The Phrygians say, "Man, they are talking Phrygian!" The Romans heard Latin. The folks from Mesopotamia heard Mesopotamian. The people from Tangier heard someone say, "God will provide." It was craziness. But it was the Spirit.

It was not meant to be a private possession of the disciples. If all the Spirit was was a golden ticket for a select few to get into the kingdom, then it was not the Spirit at all. The Spirit was to be poured out onto all flesh. The Spirit was unleashed to sweep the whole of creation into the drama. The Spirit was let go to let us in on the great love affair going on in the life of the Trinity. The love of God poured out on Jesus and in Jesus didn't have to include us. God doesn't need humanity to be God. God didn't need to create us. God didn't need to reconcile us to God. God didn't need to send Jesus, but God wanted us. God wanted the glory of a creation that could learn to sing God's praise. God wanted you and God wanted you so much that God, the great "I am," went to the cross and stretched out his arms and said, "I am for you." And the Spirit...well, the Spirit...and I bet you have never heard this analogy before...the Spirit is like the invite button on Thessa from Hamburg's Facebook. The Spirit will not let this good news be a private party. What God did in Jesus Christ is meant to be a very public event.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth, who wrote in German back in the days when Germans did heavy theology instead of going to birthday parties uninvited...Karl Barth said that "the Son of God is the prototype of the sonship of believers." Jesus shows us the way and gives us the model of what it means to be children of God. "This Christ," Barth says, "the children of God have 'put on.' This child...can meet this Father, the holy God, as a child its father, nowhere else than at the place where the only-begotten Son of God bore and bore away his sins." In other words - it is at the cross where we meet God. From God's side of the equation, Jesus on the cross is the invitation being made to the whole world of forgiveness of sins and new life in the world. But if it stopped there - if the invitation were made and no one knew - if no one responded - how sad would that be? What we need from our side is a response. What need from our side is the opportunity to participate in what God is doing. "That," says Karl Barth, "is having the Holy Spirit. Having the Holy Spirit is being set together with Christ in that turn from death to life."**

So life in the Spirit doesn't just mean ecstatic experiences and speaking in tongues. Life in the Spirit means that the cross is not just a story about Jesus; it's a story about me. And it's not just a story that took place centuries ago in a long-lost culture. It's a story that takes place now in this culture.

And it is a story that is renewed in every new generation. When we put water on Tate's head this morning...and Dale's and Morgan's...when we did that we were saying that their lives are claimed. We are saying that the love of God that we saw in the cross of Jesus was meant for them. And when the confirmands answered those questions they were placing themselves in a story that may have begun a long time ago but that is never more alive than it is in this room right now. The Holy Spirit didn't swoop down for a visit one Pentecost and then leave the building. The Holy Spirit came to stay so that every new Christian can know that they have a place, a role, a connection to God. Not because he deserves it. Not because she has earned it. But because God, who has no need of us, has made a way for us and has loved us beyond measure.

One of my colleagues in ministry, Steve Rhodes, once told the story about his daughter's birthday party. When she was a young girl, probably 4 or 5, she had invited her friends over and she could hardly wait until the guests arrived. She stood at the window and put her face to the glass, expectant. When the first guest arrived she started jumping up and down. She ran out to the car and when here friend got out the two of them started jumping up and down together. They went back into the house and looked out the window. When the next guest arrived they ran outside and the three of them now started jumping up and down. And so it went until all the guests arrived.

Steve says, this must be what the kingdom of heaven is like. A place where we are expected with joy. A place where we are invited. A place where we are ushered in the door. And a place where all are welcomed in love.

This morning, in this place, we are tasting a little bit of heaven. So praise the Lord, who sends the Spirit to make us one. Thanks be to God.

*Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben, "Facebook Sweet 16 Party Goes Viral; 1500 guests show up", Yahoo News, 5 Jun 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110605/us_ac/8591449_facebook_sweet_16_party_invitation_goes_viral_1500_guests_show_up
**Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 [T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1936], p. 524.

Life in the Spirit: Now What?

It was just about 150 years ago. Fort Sumter had fallen in Charleston Harbor. Virginia had just voted to secede from the United States. Everywhere there were signs of war – the American Civil War.

On May 23, 1861 – the very day that Virginia left the Union to join the Confederate States of America – three men got in a boat at Sewell’s Point in Norfolk and rowed across the James River to Hampton. Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend had been working on an artillery placement to bombard Fort Monroe, one of the last places in the South still under federal control.

Fort Monroe is still there today, looking a lot like it did 150 years ago. Big stone walls encircling 63 acres inside. And inside it on May 23 were brand new military units from the New England states under the command of Benjamin Butler – a Massachusetts politician and lawyer with nothing to distinguish himself as a military leader.[i]

The three men had been working to build up the Confederate defenses. As they rowed across the James, Baker, Mallory, and Townsend could probably hear the celebrations in Hampton. People out celebrating secession. But these men were not heading to the party. They were headed to the fort. They wanted to get into the only spot of land still under the control of the US government. Because Baker, Mallory, & Townsend were slaves and they hoped that whatever war was coming would be a war to free the slaves.

That’s not what northerners thought they were doing. There were some abolitionists, particularly in the northeast who thought there was no greater moral cause than getting rid of the institution of slavery. But they were in the minority. Even Abraham Lincoln, who eventually would produce the Emancipation Proclamation, didn’t think that what he was doing was trying to free slaves. He was trying to limit the expansion of slavery into the west. He didn’t like what slavery was doing to the country, but he wasn’t about to stir up the great majority of the populace by declaring war on slavery.

But everybody knew, if only deep down, that the slavery question was tying the country in knots – that it was now splitting it apart. The seeds of the dilemma had been there in the founding documents. A free nation had written slavery into the constitution. And for decades the nation struggled to reconcile its ideals with its reality. Everyone knew, if only deep down, that something had to give. Baker, Mallory, & Townsend were risking being caught or sent back for whippings or worse because they believed that if something had to give, it ought to be now.

When the three slaves showed up at the fort they were let into the gates and the next day they were brought before that Massachusetts general who had just come to Fort Monroe one day before. He questioned them about where they had come from and what they had been doing. They gave him some very useful information about what the battery across the river looked like and where the Confederates were encamped.

The policy of the US government officially was to send fugitive slaves back to their owners, even if the states had seceded from the union. The South might not be recognizing US law, but the US government was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave act of 1850. And Butler was no radical abolitionist. At his previous post in Annapolis he had volunteered to put down any slave insurrections there.

Butler recognized, however, that something new was happening here. He was surrounded by hostile territory. These three men who had shown up at the door were giving him useful information. And the landscape was changing rapidly. He was still trying to get straight in his head what he ought to do when word came that a southern officer was on the causeway demanding the return of the three slaves. What was the general going to do? More on that in a minute.

The disciples were trying to choose a successor for Judas, the one who had betrayed Jesus. As they deliberated they had one criterion for who should be considered for the position in the circle of 12. Whoever it was had to be someone who was with Jesus from the time of his baptism by John until the day of his ascension [Acts 1:22]. Those two events were the marker events of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Which tells us that the ascension was a big deal, even though we don’t tend to emphasize it much.

I know the Ascension was important, though, and you know how? Once, when I was a youth, I went to a conference youth event called YACS – Youth Active in Christian Service – and we had it at a place known as Holy Land, USA. Holy Land, USA is closed now, but it’s hard for me to know how to describe it. It was created as a kind of low-budget theme park by a deeply committed Christian farmer in Bedford who decided to convert a hundred acres of his land into a scale model of the Holy Land so that people who couldn’t afford to go to the real Holy Land could go here. It also had a retreat house on it.

It was a very interesting place. They had the Dead Sea, which was a kind of muddy pool where cows bathed. You could see the Negev desert, which, unfortunately, was covered with trees. And you could see the Mount of Transfiguration, where high-voltage power lines crossed the summit, which gave the transfiguration a whole new meaning.

The Ascension, though, was very important at Holy Land, USA. You know how I know? Because every morning I woke up and looked out the window to see the Mount of Ascension. I knew it was the Mount of Ascension because it said so in letters that were 6 feet high made of stone blocks spread out all over the hillside. There was a sign, too, but it really didn’t need it. You couldn’t miss the Mount of Ascension because it was a big deal.

It is in the Bible, too. You might wonder why that is. What more does Jesus’ ascension into heaven add to the meaning of his resurrection? Well, I think there are two things that interest me here. One is that it’s an interesting kind of kingship that Jesus assumes by taking his seat at God’s right hand. You would expect the power to be there – in heaven – but Jesus emphasizes to the disciples, in the last words he ever says to them, that they will receive power with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has been with them for his earthly ministry and has done deeds of power. He has been with them for forty days following his resurrection. Now the power is going to come to them through the Holy Spirit.

The second thing that strikes me is that in this story Jesus calls his disciples to an open ministry – a ministry that is open to the world – beginning in Jerusalem, but expanding in ever-wider circles to the ends of the earth. The disciples are called to look beyond themselves to those outside – to create a new community from the diversity of all the people of the world, not just among their own group. This will be hard for them to understand. They will resist it. They won’t get why this important. But the Holy Spirit is going to bust up some walls.

The Holy Spirit is going to move like a wrecking ball and a lightning bolt through this community of disciples. What does that power look like? Pentecostals will tell you that the power of the Spirit includes speaking in tongues. There are some snake-handling churches out in Appalachia will tell you that that is the Holy Ghost power. But the thing that stands out here is that those who have the Holy Spirit become witnesses to Christ in the world. Read verse 8 of chapter one in Acts again. Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses.”

And that power is going to be open to the world. The disciples were called to be witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Only two verses earlier they disciples were asking about when Jesus would restore the Kingdom of Israel, but Jesus is more interested in the Kingdom of God. He calls the disciples to remove the blinders which prevented them from seeing anyone beyond their own nationality and creed. For them it was a call to take the risk of moving out to discover a world that was made up of Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free, Greeks and Romans, baysiders and seasiders, migrants and locals, born-heres and come-heres, Hokies and Cavaliers – look out! And it rocked their world.

Let me take you back to Benjamin Butler. Here he is riding out to meet a Southern officer who is demanding the return of the three escaped slaves who were being held in his fort. Butler didn’t have explicit instructions on what to do. The few instructions he did have were orders to send back fugitive slaves. He didn’t have any great love for abolition either. He thought abolitionists were disturbers of the general order. But old Benjamin Butler – who was a cranky, disagreeable man with more than a few character flaws – sensed that something had changed.

He met Major John Baytop Cary on the causeway and they rode their horses together through the farmland leading back to Hampton. Cary knew Butler from before the war and he said, “What do you mean to do with those [men]?”

“I intend to hold them.”

“What about your constitutional obligation to return them?”

“Virginia is now a foreign country,” was Butler’s reply. “I am under no constitutional obligation to a foreign country.”

Cary protested that the US had claimed Virginia could not legally secede from the union so if he was to be consistent he would have to return the slaves.”

“But you say you have seceded, so you cannot consistently claim them.” And then Butler, maybe on the spot, made a decision that changed the whole character of the war that was to come. There was a principle in war that property could be taken from an enemy if it could be used to help them in their fight. Such property was contraband. And since the South had claimed that slaves were property under the law, he would use that claim against them. Benjamin Butler said to Major Cary, “I shall hold these [men] as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”[ii]

Just like that, Butler had begun a new policy that meant the war was going to be about freedom for the slaves. The next day 8 more slaves showed up at Fort Monroe. The next day there were 47. Two days later they were arriving every hour. Over the next four years thousands upon thousands of people would get their first taste of freedom as contraband. And Butler, who was not a saint and who did not go to war to free the slaves, did just that.

What does the story of Baker, Mallory, & Townsend have to do with the Holy Spirit? I was reading this story in a book by Adam Goodheart called 1861 and it struck me that here was a man who grew up in a nation that was torn apart by an evil that no one could even talk about with a civil tongue. Just to mention the name of the institution of slavery was to invite such strong passions that no one dared do it in mixed company.

But by 1861, slavery was an evil that was ready to be unraveled. It was demanding to be unraveled. And no one, besides the abolitionists, was ready to pull on the thread. There was too much fear. Too many people believed that they didn’t have the power to do anything about it. And many, many more people were afraid of what it would mean to recognize the freedom, much less the equality, of black people in the United States. The power turned out to be right there in the decision of three men to seek freedom and in the spontaneous creativity of a man on a causeway to get it for them.

So is it that you are looking at and saying, “I can’t”? “I don’t have the power. I don’t trust the world beyond. I’ve got to hold on to what I’ve got. I can’t take a risk. Maybe Jesus has the power. But I don’t. I’ll pray for Jesus to take care of that problem. I’ll pray for Jesus to do something.”

The best scene in the Ascension story is when two men in white robes show up. They show up while the disciples are still watching Jesus ascend up into the skies. I think it was the Holy Spirit talking when they prodded those future apostles with a question. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven?” Surely it would have been the Spirit, the one who enlivens and enables us…us…to continue the work of Jesus and to preach the good news of life…surely it would have been the Spirit who would remind these disciples that if they were looking for Jesus they were looking in the wrong place. The next great adventure was in the age of the Church, the body of Christ – on earth. The power was given to them to be witnesses of unity and communion in a broken and divided world. The power was given to us. Thanks be to God.

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[i] All of the material related to the story of the escaped slaves at Fort Monroe is taken from 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart, [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011], chapter 9.

[ii] Quotations from Goodheart.