Shaking off the Dust

I've gone way too long without posting, I guess I got a little bit distracted with my other work and haven't gotten around to putting up a sermon. I'll be trying to put up more in the next few weeks to catch up. This one is based on the text of Mark 6:1-13, and is called Shaking Off the Dust. 

Shaking off the Dust

            So after traveling around Galilee, preaching and healing, making a little bit of a name for himself, Jesus returns to his hometown. And he gets up to preach in the synagogue, and people are amazed at how wise they suddenly find him. They praise his wisdom, and wonder where it came from all of a sudden. But then, in nearly the same breath, they start cutting him down.

            This seems a little bit weird. I mean, if they are amazed at how wise he is, why are they so upset? Shouldn’t they be happy that he’s brought some of his wisdom to this synagogue? Doesn’t it make sense that they would be happy about his new place, delighted to hear his wisdom, and excited that he has come back, rather than moving on to bigger, better things?

            In order to understand their reaction, we have to learn a little bit more about how the society worked in antiquity. Theirs was not a meritocracy like the United States. People weren’t judged by their achievements, but by their family honor and reputation. You could call it an honorocracy.

            Depending on who your family was, you were born with a certain amount of honor. Well-born people had more honor to work with, and poorly-born people, (such as the bastard son of Mary) did not have much honor to work with. And everyone was expected to stay in their place. By behaving appropriate to your station, you could improve your family’s honor, and perhaps slowly raise your status in the community. Honor, was sort of like a credit score. Easy to damage it, slow to build it up, and everyone has one. Except that honor was public, and it was considered a limited resource. If your status went up, it was always at the expense of someone else.

            So now it makes a little bit more sense that the people were scandalized by Jesus’ newfound wisdom. He was clearly acting way above his station. Wisdom and power were the domain of other, more important people, and Jesus was just getting uppity trying to talk like he was something special. They knew where he came from. The bastard son of Mary who did some carpentry work a few towns over and now thinks he’s a combination between Ezekiel and Gandhi? And he wants them to stop listening to the priests and the Pharisees and give money to the poor and expect that to make God happy and the crops come in?  And so they attacked his reputation and his family, his sources of honor, reminding themselves and each other that he didn’t have any powerful patrons who allowed him to speak this way, no protection if he offended someone.

            But Jesus was having none of it. He had no interest in the family and kinship system that forced people to stay in their place. Everyone had to stay in line or else the whole family was punished.  The last time he came to town, some well-meaning friends and members of his family tried to get him to stop. You’re embarrassing us, they said, “don’t you realize that all your rebelliousness has an effect on all of us?” But Jesus would have none of it. He declared that there was something more important than protecting your family’s reputation. In fact, he went so far as to repudiate his own family. He responded to their concern with perhaps the most revolutionary statement yet at that point. “Who are my mother and my brothers?  Whoever does the will of God is my mother and my brother and my sister.”

            He wasn’t just rejecting the family and kinship system that ensured that people stay in their place. He was declaring that there was a power bigger and more important than status and influence. That God demanded justice more than purity, generosity before retribution, and righteousness more than social status. He declared that he could forgive sins, and that people profiting from the cleansing business were parasites on the people. He ate with tax collectors and sinners, and showed how those who thought they were righteous because they avoided the unrighteous were hypocrites. He refused to fast when people went hungry elsewhere. He was insulting everyone in their name, upsetting people they depended on, soiling what honor the family had. 

            And when you bite the system, the system bites back. Jesus was rejected in his hometown. He was, in his own words, without honor, even among his own kin. This is what happens when you rock the boat. It’s what happens when you challenge the system. Wherever you go, someone benefits from the system, and the ones who benefit usually have the most power and the most interest in keeping that system the same. It’s like in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, when the idealistic country bumpkin arrives in D.C. hoping to make the world a better place, and the other legislators try to feel him out to figure out who’s pocket he’s in. When they discover that he doesn’t have any interest in the big bankers, the steel conglomerates, or the shipping magnates, they plot to get rid of him because he makes them all look bad. Or when Billy Beane threw out all the conventional wisdom in baseball, everyone who was conventionally wise tripped all over himself to declare Beane a lunatic.

            When it comes down to it, if you have a message that is revolutionary, you are going to catch a lot of flak if you tell anyone about it. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Now of course the corollary is true as well. If you are preaching what you think is a revolutionary message, and everyone around you is nodding their heads in agreement, then you might be missing something. You can’t put three uncracked eggs on a plate and call it brunch.

The word of God is wild, scary, and awesome. It is rarely what we expect it to be. It is jarring, frustrating, and if you spend any time in a room with it, it will leave marks. It demands of us more than we’d like to give, promises us more than we’d feel comfortable receiving, and challenges us to leave our comfort zone and take risks that will lead us in new directions. It asks us to give up climbing the ladder of success and judge ourselves by our devotion to the reign of God. But we have sought to tame it. To make it a little less wild, a little simpler to follow, a little easier to control. And in doing so we’ve drifted a long way from the mark. We’ve tamed it, restrained it, so that it makes a little more sense and a little less change. What we end up preaching, is a sort of Christianity Light ™. One that gives us all the benefits of feeling like a good person without ever having to push ourselves or each other for something better. One that promises eternal life without asking for more than a couple of hours on Sunday and a few dollars in the offering plate.

Jesus gave us a revolutionary message. He gave us a message that by itself intends to change the world. This message involved leaving the places in which we are comfortable, reaching out to people we’d rather not touch, and giving up privileges we’ve never lived without. It involves rejecting would-be powerbrokers of his world to declare that God is the only power in the universe that matters. It involves denying our selfishness and our sinfulness, taking up our crosses, and following Christ. 

What Jesus demonstrates when he returns home, is that we should expect rejection. While the Word we preach will sometimes fall on good soil, and bear fruit, speaking truth to power is a dangerous occupation. Our passage concludes with Jesus sending his disciples out into the world, to preach his message. And he warns them, that if they do it right, they should expect to be rejected. That if we really preach the kingdom of God, a revolutionary, demanding idea that challenges us to create a more just society, a more welcoming community, a more heavenly earth, then we should expect that the rest of the world will put all sorts of pressure on us to slow us down, wear us out, and restrain us.

But there is good news. In spite of Jesus rejection in his hometown, his ministry does not end. Immediately following his rejection Jesus moves on and increases his ministry, refusing to be silenced. And his disciples go out and cast out the demons that oppress us, that lead us to selfishness, violence, and hatred. And they bring healing hands and loving hearts to people who desperately need them.

We have been given the authority to change the world in the name of Christ. We have been blessed with a wild, crazy message that challenges the social structures that oppress and demonize, and bringing healing and hope to a broken world. We cannot do it without experiencing rejection. But nevertheless, we must move on, because our message is so important, so crazy, so powerful, that with God’s help we will be able to move past the bitterness and divisiveness of our world into a world of justice, mercy, and peace. 

We Mourn

This was my sermon from the first of July, on David's Lament over the death of Saul and Jonathan. I'm enjoying working through the books of First and Second Samuel, and the historical-critical questions that my study of it brings up. How sincere is David's lament, given that the deaths of Saul and three of his sons has suddenly cleared the path to the throne for him? How culpable is David, given that he had been fighting on the Philistine side for two years? Could the story of him being sent back from the lines be a cover-up by his supporters to protect David from the accusation of killing Saul? 

These are good questions for study, but not necessarily good for preaching. I don't address them in this sermon. I take the text for what it is, a lament, and ask what it is we do when we are brought to our knees by the loss of a friend and comrade?  With the recent experience in America of celebrity deaths turning into multimillion dollar industries, it's worth it to look at a different model for responding to loss.
 
...we mourn.

Ever since Samuel had come to the little town of Bethlehem and brought Jesse’s sons to the sacrifice, David’s life had become complicated. One day, he was the least among his brothers, not important enough to be called in for dinner, and the next he was the secretly anointed King of Israel, called to perform before Saul, the current king of Israel. Samuel had come to Bethlehem and anointed him, and the spirit of God rested upon him. From that point forward, his life was in danger.

            The more success he had, the more danger he found himself in. David became a warrior and led the armies of Saul, and Saul grew jealous. Saul sent him on increasingly more dangerous missions, hoping that David would fall by the enemy’s sword. He sets the bride-price for his daughter at 100 Philistine foreskins, thinking that surely David cannot survive the attempt. When that fails Saul sends his servants and his son Jonathan to kill his rival. 

            In Saul’s son Jonathan, however, he found a friend. Jonathan argued on David’s behalf with his father, and even achieved a reprieve for David, if only briefly. David was able to return, but uneasily, for he knew that Saul’s anger was unappeased. Soon enough, Saul him tries to kill him, and David flees as the spear which Saul had thrown quivers in the wall where he had just stood.

With his life in danger again, David goes to Jonathan, who protects him, warning him with an arrow that it is not safe for David to return to court. With nowhere to turn in Israel, David flees to Gath, Goliath’s hometown and a city of the Philistines. David is forced to live a double life. Not safe in Israel, David must hide his loyalty to Saul amongst his enemies, finding their cities safer than his own. David spends much of his life in hiding, always afraid and always moving, worried that Saul would find him and kill him, but succored and helped by Jonathan, who had come to be his closest friend.

Saul chases him across the land, so David and his mercenary band moved often, afraid wherever they went that they would be led into a trap. Jonathan loved David so much that he comes to David in hiding, in defiance of his father. He promises that David would reign as king, forgoing his right as Saul’s heir to David, the anointed one. This was the last David would see of his friend.

He walked on the edge of a knife, lying to the Philistines about who he fought to protect his homeland, aware that his alliance with Gath could be his undoing. When the Philistines gathered to battle Saul and the Israelites, David found himself on the wrong side. Luckily for him, the other Philistine kings didn’t trust him and sent him back from the battle. He was relieved from the burden of going out to battle against Saul and Jonathan and Israel.

The text from Samuel comes after the conclusion of this battle. The mighty armies of Israel have been defeated on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines routed the Israelites, killing many, including Saul and his son Jonathan. This news comes as sadness to David. It is a great defeat his nation, Israel has lost its king and has been delivered up to the Philistines. Saul, whom he had served, has fallen, along with Saul’s son Jonathan, David’s closest friend. In spite of the evident sadness which overcomes David, it is also a relief. David can finally return to Israel. He is no longer a man without a country. He no longer has to fear for his life every waking moment.

Indeed, as the one whom Samuel anointed, the path is clear for him to become king of Israel. But David has also lost his greatest ally and friend. Jonathan risked his life for David over and over again, interceded on his behalf to his progressively more unbalanced father. Jonathan even gave up his claim to the throne for David, such was his love for his father’s rival.

For David, Saul and Israel’s defeat is both a devastating loss and a soothing relief. He has finally found safety and security. And at the same time, he’s suddenly lost the only solace which brought him this far. It is a pitiable situation, to have lost his comfort at the exact time he had escaped his tribulations. What do we do when we experience loss that is both a burden and a relief? We mourn.

Loss isn’t something that we address all that often in our society. We certainly never address it unless we’re forced to. And then when we do, it is to push it away, or try to get over it, rather than acknowledge and accept our grief.  We suddenly find it particularly pressing to demonstrate that everything is “all right,” and we allow all our energies to be focused on that one goal. When confronted with grief we try to move past it as quickly as we can, as if grief is a sickness or a disease to be cured. And what do we have to cure it with? 

And even when we want to grieve, we cannot find the words. The pop psychology answer that everyone must grieve in their own way has left us with no way. We are so open to everything that we can find comfort in nothing. The platitudes and cliché’s that we throw around so freely offer us no comfort.

Leon Wieseltier was what they call culturally Jewish, a non-practicing Jew, when his father died. But he decided to recite the mourner’s Kaddish each week at his temple, not because he was brought back to belief, but because grieving by following the path of tradition and his ancestors was easier than trying to hack his own way through the jungle of grief.

In that spirit I submit to you David’s lamentation at the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Walter Brueggemann explains that this lamentation, “this text is a noticing, and its noticing places hard questions before us.”[1] What permits one to notice the grief and loss of life around us? How can we break in on our muteness?” David does not seek answers, nor does he look past Israel’s defeat to the future. Upon hearing of the death of Saul and of his beloved friend Jonathan, David cries out in anguish, for Israel’s loss in defeat and the death of its king, and for his loss, in the death of his closest friend.

Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!

How the mighty have fallen!

Tell it not in Gath,

proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;

or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,

the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.

You mountains of Gilboa,

let there be no dew or rain upon you,

nor bounteous fields!

For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,

the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.

From the blood of the slain,

from the fat of the mighty,

the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,

nor the sword of Saul return empty.

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!

In life and in death they were not divided;

they were swifter than eagles,

they were stronger than lions.

O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,

who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,

who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

How the mighty have fallen

in the midst of battle.

Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;

greatly beloved were you to me;

your love to me was wonderful,

passing the love of women.

How the mighty have fallen,

and the weapons of war perished.

While we are so often quick to seek to put things aright, while we hesitate to acknowledge our grief, or perhaps know no way of relieving that burden, David is naked with his emotion. He grieves aloud for his nation, for his king, and for his friend and brother Jonathan. The future, for the moment, is bracketed out. He worried not about what comes next but gives voice and acknowledgement to the right now experience of loss. David shares his grief with all Israel, and Israel shares their grief with David. It is a ringing proclamation of humanity in the midst of despair.

            What do we do when loss bears both burden and relief, both guilt and anger, sadness and rage?  We mourn. We do as David did, we notice, we acknowledge, we moan. We speak honestly in the face of death. Because though Israel is largely defeated, it is not yet silenced.

            And by refusing to be silent in the face of death, we proclaim that there is more to be said. That death is not the final word. The final word is God’s and it is a word of life. A word of resurrection, healing, and hope.

---

[1] Brueggemann, Walter. First and Second Samuel. Interpretation; A Bible Commentary For Teaching and Preaching Ed. James Luther Mays. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990, p. 218.

Wearing Saul’s Armor

I've been working this summer through the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel. This is my sermon on David and Goliath. While the story is a familiar one, it still has much to say (perhaps too much, was David spoiling for a fight?) to us about our lives today. There was a time when the church was a Goliath, a massive, monolithic entity that held a near monopoly on American's social, religious, charitable, and family lives. Now, we're a lot leaner than we once were, and need to relearn the strategies of David if we are going to continue to survive in an increasingly competitive world. Here's a link to the NRSV text for that day: 1 Samuel 17:38-54.

           The Old Testament reading for this week comes from 1 Samuel 17. It’s the story of David and Goliath. And reading it again this week reminded me of an article I read a couple of years ago, by Malcolm gladwell, talking about the Davids and Goliaths in our world (Here’s the link: www.gladwell.com/2009/2009_05_11_a_david.html) and how when the two clash, things don’t always go as expected.

            In the article, Gladwell talks about a 7^th and 8^th grade girls basketball team in Silicon Valley, consisting of a bunch of girls who weren’t exactly all star athletes. Many of them had never played basketball before. Compared to the teams full of experienced players who had been playing together for years (and winning), this team was quite the David. And like David, instead of challenging their Goliaths in the traditional strategies of warfare (or basketball), they chose to take an unusual tactic.

            Their coach was an American immigrant named Vivek Ranadivé. He grew up playing soccer and cricket, and though he understood the rules, he was baffled by the strategies that most teams employed. Much of each play is made up of choreographed formalities. The defense gives ground, jogging down to their end of the court to get set. The point guard walks the ball down the court, calling a play that the team has run hundreds of times in practice, carefully choreographed to get an open shot. When the offense reaches an appointed point, suddenly the defense starts to play again, matching up against players or defending zones, challenging passes and trying to block shots. What

Ranadivé realized was that the current strategy of basketball served to expand the differences between stronger and weaker teams. It expanded the influence of greater ball-handling skill, good shooting, well-executed play, and effective post-play (i.e. tall players).

When weaker teams played traditional strategies, they tilted the playing field in favor of Goliath. In short, when you go to battle fighting by Goliath’s rules, you’ve already lost. This is what Goliath wanted when he went in to battle David, right?  He wants to fight on an open field, with the weapons he’s been training with. He wants the fight to be one-on-one, where he won’t accidentally trip over a comrade, or get whacked by an errant spear thrust, or swarmed and overwhelmed by a bunch of people at once. He wants to tilt the field in his favor. This is the nature of Goliaths. When you begin to accumulate power and influence you use that power and influence to make things easier on yourself. You tilt the playing field in your favor.

            Now over the years the mainstream church has accumulated remarkable amounts of influence and power, and have managed to tilt the playing field in our favor. Business hours are constructed to fit the religious schedule, and blue laws once prevented business from opening on Sunday mornings helped encourage people to go to church. Often churches were powerbrokers within cities, in which everyone of significance was a member of a church, and nothing could be done in a town without their support. { In the 50’s and 60’s, which was the height of membership and success for mainstream churches, the church so dominated the local landscape that nearly every social function existed or operated through the church in some way. }

            However, many of the advantages that the church once held are evaporating. TV and Radio stations no longer give Sunday morning programming over to churches, making people a little bit more likely to find themselves on a couch instead of a pew on Sunday morning. Little League coaches no longer avoid scheduling practice or games on Sunday mornings. Prominent political and religious scandals have stained the church’s image, and young people grow up with a very different idea of who the church is than their parents did. In short, the Church is no longer the Goliath it once was. The playing field is no longer tilted in our favor.

            In spite of this change in the church’s status over the last 60 years, the church hasn’t adapted new strategies. The church continues to act as if it had the favored status and a dominant social position that it no longer holds.  We’ve attempted to freeze ourselves in time, acting as if we’re still in the fifties while the rest of the world has long passed into the 21^st century. Much of the liturgy that we use today was considered innovative when it first came into use, and instead of continuing to innovate in our liturgy, we’ve built walls around it and try to keep it from changing. Instead of searching for our own voice, however, we’ve chosen to wrap ourselves in the familiar. We still imagine that we have a monopoly on Sunday morning, instead of acknowledging that we’re competing against more other options and activities than we ever have before. We still believe that we have the moral high ground, instead of the reality that the church’s image in the public has been trashed by years of being used as a political football, and by scandals of every type and nature.

            In short, we’re like David trying to wear Saul’s armor. In our desire to pretend like we’re still what we once were, we’ve burdened ourselves with a century of baggage, and we’re weighed down by attitudes and approaches that now only serve to tilt the playing field against us. Should David have bowed to convention and worn the armor and used the weapons of King Saul, he would have lost the battle before he took the field. The armor was such a burden that he could barely walk. The shepherd’s strength and skill with a spear were nothing compared to Goliath’s. If David had come at Goliath with the spear and the shield, he would have been defeated without a doubt.

            David knew that he couldn’t approach Goliath with a traditional strategy. David knew who he was, and he knew where his skill lay. Instead of fighting the battle on Goliath’s terms, he tilted the playing field back in his favor. He went to battle unencumbered except for his sling, and pulled five smooth stones from the river. We know what happens next. He speeds up the game. He runs at Goliath, and before Goliath can take aim with his spear or swing his sword David has lept up and slung a rock straight at his forehead. Goliath is felled even before he has a chance to take advantage of his strength.

            As for that basketball team, instead of giving up ¾ of the court, Ranadive taught his inexperienced girls basketball team to take advantage of their strengths, instead of playing to the strengths of the Goliaths of the basketball world. They refused to give up the half-court, and pressed 100% of the time. Traditional teams didn’t know what to do with them.  They played defense so well that other teams often couldn’t get the first inbounds pass. And because they often got the ball right under the opposing teams basket, they never had to make long shots or run the crisp offensive plays the Goliaths were so good at. They went up by ten, fifteen, one time even twenty-five points. This team, which could hardly have expected to win many games, managed to make it all the way to the national tournament. They won their first three games, and ended up one game away from the national championship. All because they refused to play the game according to Goliath’s rules. They refused to put on Saul’s armor.            

            If the mainstream church is going to have a future, we have to stop assuming that the playing field is tilted towards us. We have to stop acting like a Goliath, and counting on our own strength and traditions to fight our battles for us. We will have to learn to behave more like David than Goliath. We’ll need to become unconventional in our desire to spread the Gospel. We’ll need to break the traditional rules of warfare, and even experience some condemnation and shame from those who would be more comfortable if we played Goliath’s game. We can no longer count on superior strength or numbers or societal protection or superior social status to call people to join communities of faith.

           

            Like David, we must recognize who we are and where our advantages are. We must embrace the communities that we are, instead of pretending to be who we were, and move into the future pressing every advantage that we have, trusting fully in God’s power to help us adjust to a new game, adapt new strategies, and tilt the playing field towards our own strengths and advantages. We just have to take off Saul’s armor.

The Bubble

This was my sermon on June 17th, 2012 on 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13. Here is a link to the text: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=207750408.
 

The Bubble

Hannah and I like a TV show called 30 Rock. It’s about a woman named Liz Lemon who is the head writer on a show a lot like Saturday Night Live. And in one of the episodes, she starts dating a new guy who is absolutely gorgeous (He’s played by Jon Hamm, the man who stars as the dapper advertising executive in Mad Men). So much so, in fact, that every where he goes people bend over backwards to be nice to him. Police officers rip up his parking tickets when they see his face. He never waits for a table at a restaurant. He gave tennis lessons for years without ever learning to play because women wanted to look at him so much they didn’t care. 

            After a few dates Liz realizes that he lives in a bubble. He has no idea how bad he is at tennis, no experience at waiting in lines, no clue that everyone without as pretty of a face has to pay their own parking tickets. He even thinks he speaks French because no one has ever corrected him. 

And while it’s a bit of an exaggeration, the bubble exists in the real world too. A beautiful face can sometimes get you out of a speeding ticket, or into a club that would otherwise be closed off. Tall men with deep voices are listened too more quickly than the rest of us. Young married men have a much easier time finding jobs as pastors than their single or older friends. We’re all quick to judge people by the way they look, whether it’s assuming that someone with tattoos and a strange haircut is dangerous, or that someone wearing a suit is trustworthy. We base many of our decisions on factors of appearance, sometimes without even realizing it. I doubt anyone would say that they choose who they vote for based on height, but since 1904 more than 70% of our commanders and chief were taller than the opposing candidate. And though height probably doesn’t affect business acumen, a disproportionate amount of CEOs of major companies are over 6 feet tall. 

Leaders were judged by their stature and appearance in Biblical times too. According to that standard, Saul was judged a great king. The book of Samuel says that Saul was “a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else.” (1 Samuel 9:2) People saw him and were inspired to follow. He had great success on the battlefield, and because of it and the regard that people had for him, he tried to get away with things he shouldn’t do. Like Liz Lemon’s boyfriend, Saul sort of lived in a bubble. In one particular episode, Saul demonstrates that he’s not accustomed to waiting on others. Rather than waiting until Samuel arrives he gives a burnt offering himself. God is displeased that Saul puts his own interests first, seeking to please his restless populace instead of his Lord. When Samuel arrives he tells him that he has blown his chance. The Lord would have established a line of kings of Israel under Saul, but because of his disobedience, the Lord is taking new applications, seeking “a man after God’s own heart.”

Even after this, Saul continues to live in his bubble, doing what he wants because he is king, instead of what God wants. Though God commanded him to destroy the livestock of the Amalekites, he destroys only the weak and worthless, saving the choicest and the fattest of the flocks, relenting to pressure from his army. When Samuel confronts him, he says that he saved them to sacrifice to the Lord. For his disobedience, God rejects Saul as King over Israel, and God even regrets that God made him king in the first place. 

So in our story for today, the Lord sends Samuel to anoint for him a new King. “I have seen a king for myself among the sons of Jesse,” God tells Samuel, and tells him to go to Bethlehem. Samuel hesitates, for the feud between him and Saul was likely well-known, and he is afraid that Saul might kill him should he find out. In a bitterly ironic response, God gives Samuel the same lie that Saul told him, that he has is going there to sacrifice to the Lord. 

While some of the Bible can seem formulaic and dry, or difficult to understand, the Samuel Saga is remarkably well written and well-told. The story of Noah uses the word cubits far too many times to qualify as good drama, but the fall of Saul and the rise of David are such a great story that just a couple of years ago NBC turned it into a prime time drama. And the little details like Samuel telling the same lie that Saul told him are marks of a well-crafted story. In our story for today, not only does God (through Samuel) spit back the lie that Saul had told him, but everything is carefully told in terms of vision and with a focus on outward appearances, emphasizing the contrast between the way God sees and the way humans see.  

 Samuel has gone to Bethlehem, for the Lord has seen for Godself a king among the sons of Jesse. Samuel invites Jesse and his sons to the sacrifice that provides the pretense for his visit. When they arrive, Jesse shows each of his sons to Samuel, and Samuel looks at each one. We see them through Samuel’s human eyes, he is impressed by the what he sees.  

Jesse’s first son comes before Samuel. Samuel sees him and sees a great leader. He is tall, and handsome. Samuel reaches for his horn of oil, but the Lord stills his hand. “Do not look at his appearance or his height, because I have rejected him. The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Abinadab comes forward, and again Samuel sees a beautiful and tall young man. The kind of man that armies would follow, constituents would listen to, and elders would obey. Samuel’s hand is stilled again. The author draws this out as long as possible. A third son, Shammah passes by. Again, God tells Samuel that this is not the chosen one. Four more sons pass in front of Samuel this way, and none of them are the Lord’s chosen. When all of the sons have passed by and none of them have passed muster, Samuel must ask if there is another son, and Jesse must send to the farm to bring David. David had been shepherding the sheep, and when he arrives Samuel anoints him as king, shepherd of all Israel. 

The moral of the story is clear. Perhaps as clear as any story in the Bible. “The Lord does not see as mortal sees, but the Lord looks on the heart.” The emphasis on vision makes this particularly hard to miss. Even David is described by his outward appearance, as one who is “good to look at” with blue eyes and a ruddy complexion. But even though he’s good to look at, he is not exactly king material. He still sits at the kid’s table! He’s both young and small, not exactly the type to inspire fear in the heart of the enemy, or loyalty in his soldiers. But the Lord has chosen him among all the people to be the chosen king, to deliver the people of Israel. The spirit of the Lord gripped him mightily from that day forward. 

And from that day forward, David lives in a bubble. David has ten times the success on the battlefield Saul experienced. They used to sing, Saul has slain thousands, and David tens of thousands. David unites Israel and Judah into one kingdom, and turns it from a loose confederation of tribes into a nation. It is to David that Israel traces its roots. Saul is a foil through which we can see how David, and Israel, and their special relationship with God, are what matters. 

But David’s bubble is a different bubble from the one Saul inhabited. Saul was protected from disagreement by his strength and his stature. David, on the other hand, is protected by the Spirit of God.  David’s bubble is his relationship with God. David puts God at the center of his life. He is truly, as Samuel prophesied, “a man after God’s own heart” When David experiences tragedy, he turns to God. When David experiences joy, he turns to God. When David sins, he turns to God. When David mourns, he turns to God. 

David doesn’t worry about his enemies, even though from the moment he is anointed he has many. He faces Goliath armed with little but absolute trust in God. He doesn’t care about what people think, only what God thinks.  When he dances before the Lord in victory and accidentally flashes a bunch of people, his wife rebukes him, but he replies that his dance was for the Lord. He lives in the bubble of being after God’s heart, of being in relationship with God. Now the bubble does not protect David from all harm, indeed the anointing that David receives often feels more like a target on his back than a blessing, but David never forsakes the Lord, even as the Lord punishes him. 

This is what I love about David. He is a particularly human individual. He has unprecedented success, he makes terrible mistakes, he experiences the height of joy and the depth of despair, and through it all he worries about nothing but what God thinks. I dream of having a faith like David’s. I think his faith, in spite of his personal flaws, blind spots and problems, is one that we should look to as an example. Put yourself in the bubble of relationship with God. Let God be the only judge through which you see your actions.  

A few years ago my friend and I were teaching Vacation Bible School in Washington Heights in New York, and our lesson for the day was on the Gospel text for today, the parable of the mustard seed. And so to show the students how this tiny little thing could grow up into something great I started looking up pictures of mustard trees. To show how big that they grow, and how birds and animals shelter beneath their branches. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any pictures, because mustard does not grow on trees (again I expose my urban bias. I tell you things that anybody with any sense already knows). And that the mustard seed that we eat is not the mustard that Jesus was talking about. 

The mustard that grew in the Holy Land was the same mustard that grows out here in the fields. Yes, it’s THAT mustard. The mustard that chokes out other vegetation, seems to grow anywhere and everywhere, and just generally causes trouble. And don’t think that in Jesus time it was any less of a problem. And so when Jesus tells us of this tiny seed that grows enough to shelter animals and birds, he is radically reenvisioning what it means to be the shoot that springs forth from the root of Jesse. He is proclaiming a new reality, on in which God does not take the strongest or the most stately, but stubborn, trouble causing problem people, and uses them for mighty works. 

This is what living in God’s Bubble is about. It’s about not seeing as mortals see, but as God sees. It’s about believing that a weed can grow so large that it will shelter animals beneath its branches. It’s about trusting that a few stones will slay a giant. It’s knowing that God takes sinful, weed-like, trouble causing folks and destines them for great things. All we have to do is live in relationship with God. Put our trust in God above all else. Seek God’s approval instead of the approval of our colleagues. Seek the Holy Spirit instead of seeking to impress people. Refuse to be ashamed when you do something to please God. 

If you put yourself in God’s Bubble, you will find that you can slay giants. If you put yourself in God’s bubble, you will live a more full life. If you put yourself in God’s bubble, you will grow such that you can shelter others beneath your branches. If you put yourself in God’s bubble, you will find yourself gripped by the Holy Spirit, empowered by the might and will of God, able to accomplish things that you had not yet dreamed of. 

            It won’t be easy, and it won’t be perfect. God knows that David never was, and his life was full of trouble, intrigue, and heartbreak. But if you put yourself into a real relationship with God, forsaking the opinions of others for the presence of the Almighty, you will find that you are able to accomplish things you didn’t think possible, and see things you never imagined. And like David, you will proclaim to all who will listen, that Easter confession, “The Lord lives! Blessed by my rock, and exalted by my God, the rock of my salvation.

Letting Ourselves Be Bound

This was my sermon a few weeks ago on Jesus' parable about Binding the Strong Man. I've been reading the book Binding the Strong Man, by Ched Myers, and I worked to catch myself up to the point of this parable, only to be a little bit disappointed that Myers' interpretation didn't provide as much sermon fodder as I'd hoped (It's still a great book, though very dense on the hermeneutic theory). As for the story, I learned about Semmelweiss through the Freakonomics Podcast. If you want to learn more about that story, here's a link to the podcast:Freakonomics Podcast - Handwashing and Financial Literacy. And here's a link to Mark 3:20-35, the text for the sermon: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=207749696.

 Letting Ourselves Be Bound

 

Ignaz Semmelweiss was an obstetrician in Vienna in 1800s. Now there were two maternity clinics in Vienna at that time open to poor women, created to help reduce the rates of infant mortality and infanticide at the time.  One was staffed by medical students, and the other by midwives in training. And the clinic staffed by medical students had a mortality rate that was triple the midwive’s clinic. Semmelweis studied the problem, and found that the two clinics were nearly identical in skill, technique, and clientele.  The only difference he could find was that the medical students would spend their mornings in class, dissecting cadavers before going over to perform their shift at the clinic. 

This was long before anyone knew what germs were, but Semmelweis theorized that some “cadaverous particles” were traveling on the hands of the medical students, and that was causing the unusually high death rate. He proposed that the obstetricians wash their hands before going to deliver babies in the maternity clinic. It worked. The mortality rates dropped by more than 90%. And he was fired. Yes, fired. You see in spite of his success, nobody wanted to make the changes that Semmelweis suggested. His theories challenged the way that they looked at the world, and demanded that they change. They thought his theories about cadaverous particles were crazy, and they said so.

He was ridiculed. He couldn’t find a job, so he had to move. It continued to affect his life, and he was eventually committed to an insane asylum, all for suggesting that doctors ought to wash their hands after they’ve had them in a dead body. This kind of a thing is common. Frequently when people come up with an idea that challenges the status quo, they are branded wingnuts or crazies for their boldness. Relatively benign change faces a steep uphill battle, but change that challenges the powers that be rejected even more quickly.

Now if Semmelweis was crazy for proposing that doctors wash their hands before they deliver babies, what Jesus is proposing in the book of Mark is out of this world wack-o. It’s tinfoil hat, convinced that Elvis is living in your guest room, talking to martians in your head, off the wall bonkers. See, up to this point in his ministry (and in chapter 3, it’s really just beginning), Jesus has challenged all of the powerful institutions of authority in first century Palestine. He made a leper clean with his touch, challenging the monopoly the local priests held on cleanliness and uncleanliness, for which priests charged fees that weighed heavily on lepers and other second-class citizens. He ate with taxpayers and sinners, rejecting the Pharisaic rules of table fellowship that demanded that only “respectable” people be given access to power and status, and any who were different should be shunned. He declared to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, challenging the scribes who kept records of people’s debts, who insisted that only through the Temple which they controlled could one find forgiveness.

Now when word got around that Jesus was doing these things, rumors began to fly. People began to say that he was out of his mind, off his rocker, a few crayons short of a box, a few fries short of a Happy Meal. And who was it who was saying such things?  It was those people whose control of the system he challenged. Scribes were sent up from Jerusalem to fan the flames, and they went even further than crazy, they said he was the devil. They declare that he has been casting out demons in the name of Beelzebul, ruler of demons. The fact that Mark uses Beelzebul in this passage is significant. It means “Lord of the dwelling,” or “Lord of the house.”

Jesus responds to this accusation with two parables about houses, challenging once again the world of the elites. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Jesus asks. “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”  Simply put, their accusations don’t make sense. If Jesus was, in fact, a demon, why would he want to cast out other demons? 

But the parable goes deeper than just a rejection of the scribal arguments. Mark chooses to use the metaphor of a house for a reason. Throughout Scripture the Temple is referred to as the house of God. And God’s dwelling place should be where God’s justice, mercy, and peace reside. And when the people of God allow that justice to be perverted, allow that mercy to be forsaken, allow that peace to be overturned, God sent prophets to proclaim his displeasure. The prophet Jeremiah talks about this, the Lord commands him to stand in the gates of his house and condemn the people for their oppression of the orphan, the alien, and the widow, “Has this house,” the Lord says, “which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?”

It is these same words Jesus will say when he also stands at the gates of the Lord’s house, for it was, at that time, in fact divided against itself. The place where God’s justice was supposed to reign was a place of power, wealth, and politics, and where wealth was created and influence peddled among the wealthy and well-connected. The scribal and priestly authorities who were supposed to provide for the needy, widows, and orphans were creating new ones by the day. The temple authorities who were supposed to enforce the Sabbath or Jubilee year that prevented farmers from being crushed by debt and losing their land was carefully circumvented, and people in Galilee were being forced to give up the land that their parents and grandparents had worked and owned, and move to cities to find jobs, or return to the same place as tenants, and be charged nearly their entire crop for the privilege.

               

            Jesus was challenging the laws and interpretations that perverted God’s justice and mercy, he was rejecting the idea that a few powerful families could set the bar for righteousness so high that only they could achieve it, and then charge others for their sinfulness.

We need to be careful here, because historically, Christians have read these Scriptures and others and proclaimed that these things are Jewish things. But this reading is dangerous and scandalous in two ways. The first is that it leads down a dangerous path, for if we equate modern Judaism with the sinfulness of the wealthy absentee landlord classes, we declare that Judaism is a faith of legalism and oppression superceded by the law of grace, and we declare that God has broken God’s promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that Jewish people are forsaken and evil. We have been down that path before, and we know where it leads.

The second way in which seeing this as a Jewish problem is dangerous is that it lets us off the hook. It lets us claim that this injustice which Jesus rejected was a Jewish problem, and not what it really is, a human problem. In our selfishness, in our me-first approach to life, we seek to create the best world for ourselves, and we fight to protect our own interests, even when they come at the expense of another. In our desire for control, we create rules for what it is to be an acceptable member of our society, and we deny the benefits of society to anyone who does not fit in. And yet, in our minds we are always the good guys, and we never consider that it might be us that have divided God’s house against itself. We never think that we might be the scribes and the Pharisees that Jesus so decisively rejects.

             

            But truly we also live in a house which is divided against itself, one in which God’s justice is rarely found. We proclaim ourselves to be forgiven sinners, but even in church forgiveness is rarely to be found. Anyone who’s been through a conflict in a church or been on the wrong side of a grudge knows that our past sins are never so easily forgotten. We hear reports of abuse at factories that make our products, yet we only pay lip service to doing something about the abuses that keep our prices low. Even more injustice, we just pretend not to see. We are a nation filled with Christians, yet forgiveness is rarely to be found. We proclaim ourselves recipients of God’s grace, blessed with Christ not because we deserve it but because God’s love is that powerful, but we deny that grace to others. Yes, if we say that we are different from the scribes and the Pharisees we testify against ourselves, for we see the same injustice in our world, and we do nothing to stop it.

             

             Jesus told a parable about a man who, having received forgiveness from the king of ten thousand talents immediately has someone thrown into prison for a debt of one hundred denarii, and is called again before the king and locked away for his cruelty. Yet we stand idle as banks who were forgiven debts in the billions foreclose on people for a few thousand. We proclaim that we are called to share the love of Christ given to us even though we do not deserve it with everyone in the world. But we surround ourselves with exclusive institutions, and work to narrow the paths to success to those who we feel deserve it.

           Jesus concludes our story with another parable, one that makes his intentions clear as it regards the house of God. “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Jesus intent is nothing short of revolutionary. The house is divided against itself. It is controlled by “the strong man” the “Lord of the dwelling” who hoards its goods and controls its wealth. And Jesus intends to plunder it.  By denying the authority of the Temple to withhold the forgiveness of sins, Jesus binds the strong men who controlled the population by controlling accounts of their debt, by eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus rejected the strong men who hoarded their status and influence and extended his peace and fellowship that all might have hope of success, in cleansing a leper he plundered the priestly power to control people’s access to God and charge them for it.  Jesus sought to bind the strong man, to shatter the earthly, sinful powers that sought conquest and control, influence and access. 

           What does this mean, for us strong men, who have succeeded in this world, who have found ourselves with financial security, with power and influence in our community, with the ability to make our future more just, more merciful, more grace-filled? What does it mean for us who have hoarded status to ourselves and our friends, who have withheld healing from those in need, who have denied fellowship with sinners and social outcasts? I struggle with this every day. When we are so deeply ensconced in systems that oppress, in dividing the house against itself, how do we get out?

           And while I don’t think there is an answer, no one-off solution that will bring justice to an unjust world, salvation to all who need saving grace, hope for all who despair, I do think that it will begin with those of us strong men realizing that the house needs to be plundered, that the bounty and blessings of God must be shared, and letting ourselves be bound.

            Letting ourselves be bound by a desire to be the body of Christ in the world, bound as faithful ministers of God’s grace to extend healing hands, listening ears, and helpful hearts to those in need. Letting ourselves be bound by those blessed ties which bind our hearts in Christian love. Letting ourselves be bound by our conviction that God’s grace comes not only to those who are righteous and good, but to those who are flawed, broken, and sinful.

Worthy and Redeemed

Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, over Bear Lake in Alaska. via

This is my sermon from last Sunday, the third of June. The text is Isaiah's call, and it can be found in all its NRSV glory here: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=206352410. The sermon is about the doctrine of total depravity (but read it anyway).
 

Have y’all ever heard of the Northern Lights? They only happen that I know of, along the northern edge of the United States and in Canada. Supposed to be one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see.  I had heard of it before, also known as the Northern Lights, but I’d never seen it, nor had my roommate Stacey. When we heard, we went out from our room onto the fire escape of our building, and looked out and could see something faintly, but the light from the building was too bright to see clearly. So we went down the fire escape and down the road from school into the cornfield next door. Everywhere you looked, people were stopped, on their way back to the dorms or the library or wherever, just staring up at the night sky. 

            When we finally got far enough away from the lights to see it clearly we were amazed. I had always heard of the Northern Lights as streaks of white light, but on truly good nights for it, the lights show up in different colors, as if someone streaked glitter highlighters all over the night sky. We stood outside in awe, staring at the majesty of creation, suddenly aware of our own size relative to the world we live in, the universe around us. 

            It is moments like these that we suddenly find ourselves confronted with the majesty of God.  I’ve experienced it most often outside and alone, whether watching a sunset from the patio or wandering around on a hike, but I’ve often been struck by this feeling of awe, at the wondrous work of creation that God wrought. 

            Rudolf Otto talks about this feeling. He refers to it as the creature feeling, when we are seized with fear and trembling, suddenly aware of our own mortality in reference to the immortal. It is in a moment like this that we find Isaiah today. Isaiah sees a vision of the powerful presence of the Almighty. The hem of God’s robe fills the temple, smoke fills the house, and the voices of the seraphs in attendances praise the Lord so powerfully that it shakes the very foundations of the building. 

            And Isaiah’s response is purely natural. He is suddenly filled with awareness of his own sinfulness, his own shamefulness, his own overwhelming creature-ness, standing before one who is supreme over all creatures. It is as if, like Adam and Eve, suddenly he is aware of his own nakedness, his own weakness, his own enfleshedness. He finds himself in want of a fig leaf. And he declares, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” 

            He’s like Peter, who sees Jesus’ miracle that filled his fishing boat with fish beyond number, and declares, “depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Or Like Abraham, who says, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. The presence of such greatness makes us realize how little we are in comparison. As Otto explains it, “It is the emotion of a creature, abased and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme over all creatures.”[1]

            This is the root of a classic Presbyterian doctrine that has obtained a bit of a bad reputation over the years. It is the doctrine of total depravity (it’s the T in the Reformed acronym TULIP). It’s received a bad reputation because people who don’t understand it in relationship to God think it’s a little harsh. They accuse reformed believers of telling people that they are worthless, and in a world where self-esteem is prized over logic, this seems a great sin. But what these people don’t realize is that the doctrine of total depravity can only be understood in the greater reality of the greatness of God. We are not worthless and alone, as people who misinterpret this doctrine would say, but all of our worth is given to us by the Almighty.  

Now this can be taken too far. The critics do have some ammunition. There have been, and probably still are pastors who preach our sinfulness so much they never have time to get to the grace part, or they have us believing that we are worthless. But the idea of total depravity must always be balanced with the Scriptural proclamation that we were made in the image of God. We have worth, our lives are not empty, our spirits not crushed, because God, in God’s infinite goodness, has seen fit to give it to us. 

            How radical an idea this is, in a world where we are constantly seeking the approval of others. We want someone to tell us we’re beautiful, we want to be recognized as good leaders, as important people in society, as good parents, good teachers. We spend our lives hoping that someone will declare us worthy, obsessing over what other people think of us, and God’s grace comes to us and tells us that we are already worthy, we have been made worthy by our Creator, and we need not worry. What an incredible thought!

            And so it happens with Isaiah, standing in the presence of God, feeling all too creaturely, all too unworthy to be in this great presence. Just as he is brought to confess, as we are, that we are insignificant compared to the power of God, one of the seraphs brings to him a live coal, touches it to his lips, and declares to him that his guilt has departed and that his sins have been blotted out. In spite of his unworthiness, his overwhelming smallness in the face of the Infinite, the Almighty, God cleanses him, counting him as righteous, erasing his sinfulness and making him worthy to stand before the Lord. 

            This is the greatness of God. God’s love is so great, God’s mercy so infinite, that God can come down even to us, lowly and insignificant though we are, and make us worthy of his love. God’s love for us runs so deep that God took on flesh, and all of the creaturely limitations there in, that everyone might experience God’s grace, that all of us might have our sins forgiven, our wounds healed, our hearts uplifted. 

            As Jesus explains to Nicodemus, in our Gospel message for today, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Friends we stand before God as sinners, unclean and unworthy, like Isaiah, lost and alone. But the good news for today is this: God does not condemn sinners. God welcomes us. God redeems us. And God calls us to lives worthy of the grace which we have been given, that we might stand in the presence of the Almighty, as sinners redeemed, and say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me”

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[1] Otto, Rudolf, “The Idea of the Holy” Trans. John Harvey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. p. 10.

Follow Where God Leads - A Sermon for Pentecost (A few weeks late)

I'm still a few weeks behind on putting up sermons, and I have no excuse (it's not like I'm not just copying and pasting these into the blog). I just returned from Presbytery this evening, and in spite of all the bureaucratic wranglings, I still return excited about all the ways the Spirit is moving among Presbyterians across Mission Presbytery. The sermon illustration comes from a sermon by Tom Long, called "What's the Gift" that you can check out if you click on the footnote. He's a much better preacher than I am, so you may want to just skip to the bottom and go for it. Hopefully it will help remind everyone that God is here in the midst of our bureaucratic wranglings, and that we should be prepared for God to fill us, inspire us, and upend us, as we seek to listen for what the Spirit is doing, and try to keep up.

Follow Where God Leads

When Reverend Tom Long was first beginning his ministry as a young minister at a small church, he started a pastor’s Sunday School class on the basics of Christian faith. He invited anyone who was new to the faith or would like a refresher course to come.

            When the class began, he entered the room expecting it to be filled with people. Instead, he found three elementary school children, little girls, waiting on him to begin the class. Over the next several weeks, he tried to hide his disappointment, and teach these young girls about what it is to be a Christian. The week before Pentecost Sunday, he asked, “Do you know what Pentecost is?” None of them did.

            “Well,” he said, Pentecost was when the church was seated in a circle and tongues of fire came down from heaven and landed on their heads and the spoke the gospel in all the languages of the world.”

            Two of the girls took this new information with nonchalance, but the third’s eyes grew wide and jaw dropped all the way too the floor. When she finally pulled herself together enough to speak, she said, “Reverend Long, we must have been absent that Sunday!”

            The beautiful thing, Long says, is not that the girl misunderstood. The beautiful thing is that she thought it could have happened there, in that little church, that God’s Spirit could have come down and given them a word to speak that the world so desperately need to hear.[1]

            It is easy to get cynical about the church, especially in this day and age. It’s easy to wonder if God’s Spirit is still alive in the church. Church, for many people, has become one more activity in a schedule that is already too full. One more committee meeting to go to, one more batch of cookies to bake, set of phone calls to make.  It’s easy for us to no longer believe that the Spirit could be alive in the midst of budget cuts and volunteer burnout, of never-ending committee meetings and never enough relaxation. The Spirit of God can be hard to find. And often we don’t realize it, but we’ve stopped looking for it. We’ve gotten so tangled up in all the work that we have to do that we’ve begun to think that it’s all about us doing it. 

            Now some people might tell you that this has not always been the case. That bureaucracy has not always entangled us, or that the Presbyterian desire for decency and order has not always conflicted with the need to be Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. But I offer up today’s text as an example. We have, today, a beautiful and familiar story of God’s Spirit entering the people like a mighty rushing wind, and alighting on them as tongues of flame, filling them with the Holy Spirit that gave them words to speak and new ways to speak them so that everyone was able to hear. It declares that the Holy Spirit was alive and well during those times.

            What we often forget, is that this story is situated between two dry, very orderly stories of church bureaucracy. The story that immediately precedes the story of Pentecost is the election of new officers, in which the community gathers together to select a representative, just as we do in our church in electing session members. They elect Matthias as the new 12^th disciple, and likely immediately commission him to chair several committees. After the story of Pentecost come more stories of the inner workings of church.  In Acts 6, a task force is created to provide for the widows of the community, in response to a complaint by the Hellenists that the food was not being distributed equally by other factions. The entire chapter of Acts 15 is given over to a deeply divided council meeting regarding that standards of membership in the community. Does any of this sound familiar?  The reality we experience in the book of Acts is that God is not only present even in the inner workings, the seeming endless tedium of what is involved in real ministry, but God is working in and through each of us towards the manifestation of God’s kingdom here on earth.

             The book of Acts tells of incredible miracles of the Spirit that we hardly believe could happen anymore. But it does so in the midst of telling us stories of the church working out what it is to follow the Spirit in committee meetings, task forces and general assemblies. And the underlying theme within that is that God’s spirit is alive wherever its people are gathered, and even in places where God’s people have not yet gathered. It is found in the midst of working together, negotiating the conflicting visions of where we think the church is going, praying and listening for the Spirit in our lives, going to meetings, making phone calls, and looking over financials. God’s Spirit is present among us, . God is present among us.

            This is incredible news for us. Not only because it declares that God will be with us even in the tedium of our ministry, but because it proclaims once again that God will be at work in the world whether we are or not. As Jesus told us in the gospel of Luke, if we were to stop proclaiming God, even the rocks and the trees would rise up to give glory to the Lord.

            What a relief it is to know this! What a relief it is for us who often feel the weight of the whole church on our shoulders, who take on the burdens of worrying about the church’s future, who take on the responsibility for the church’s successes and failures. To know that the church’s future does not depend on us! 

            The story of Pentecost is the story of God’s Spirit coming down amidst the day to day practicalities of working together as a community of faith. The people gathered together in that place did not bring the Holy Spirit with them. They did not call it up with just the right words or hand motions or any act of their own. They were waiting, as Jesus had told them, in Jerusalem. And when the Spirit of God came to them, with the sound of wind and as a vision of flames upon their heads, they welcomed it.

            This is our call. Not to build the future of our church, or shape where we will go over the next few years, for these will be done by God as God sees fit whether we want them or not. Our task is to listen for the Holy Spirit, to hear where it is calling, to follow where it is leading us, and to welcome it, and try to keep up.

            As you go out this week, into the world and all of the obligations therein, I encourage you to ask yourself. “Where do I see the Holy Spirit moving in my life?” What sort of a future does God have planned for me?” “How do I get myself in line with what the Spirit is doing?”

            That perhaps some day, when we hear someone telling us a story of the day that the Holy Spirit came among the people of the church, and filled them all with the words which they needed to say, the courage they needed to go out into the world as vessels of God’s grace, our eyes can go wide and a smile will cross our faces as we say, “Yes, I remember that Sunday.”

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[1] Long, Thomas G. “What’s the Gift” Day1.org, May 27, 2012. http://day1.org/3822-whats_the_gift