Mending the Nets

Scripture Lessons: Jonah 3: 1-5 and Mark 1: 14-20 Sermon Title: Mending the Nets Preached on January 21, 2018 This has been a big weekend at the church. Yesterday was the church officer's retreat. Your elected Elders and Deacons were here. We were talking about the future of our church with excitement, moving forward into this new year, and in addition to all that, in Holland Hall yesterday was the Cub Scout's pinewood derby. I remember being a Cub Scout in Holland Hall for the pinewood derby. The scene was just about the same as it was then. There was a long track. It used to be wood, but now its metal. The cars line up in heats, and the cub scouts still all huddle around the starting line cheering for these cars that they either made by themselves or with a parent. Two of Judy and Bob Harper's grandsons are in our Cub Scout Troop and we were standing together with their son-in-law Rob. I asked Rob about the construction of his son's cars. How much of the pinewood derby car he was responsible for as opposed to what his sons did? He was telling me about how they did some of the sanding, but as for sawing the wood, he did most of that, and at that point in the conversation the father in front of us turned back and said, "Really, it all depends on whether or not you want to make a trip to the ER." This is still the same. When it comes to the pinewood derby there's often that balance between letting your son figure it out for himself and a father doing it all for him. That's how it was when I was a kid too. My dad insisted that I lead the project. He helped me do whatever I wanted done, but he wanted me to be in charge, which was fine while we were making the car but sad in the race because I always got beat by some kid whose engineer dad had done the whole thing for him. Looking back, I can see that maybe that boy won the pinewood derby, but where does it stop? And at some point, it has to, because to become an adult, we all have to step out on our own. The disciples knew about that. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God…" And as he passed along the Sea of Galilee, there were two brothers who were mending nets with their father. "Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him." What about that? You've heard a story like that before. Dad's an optometrist. He builds up his own office, and it's not easy making it on his own, what with Lenscrafters and Walmart basically giving glasses away. But he keeps going because he has a daughter who's a student at the School of Optometry and Vision Science, and he dreams of handing that practice over to her. Only guess what? She falls in love with some guy and they start a family What about that? Or consider this father. Last summer I bought this pasta maker at a yard sale. I bought it for 20 bucks, which is a lot to spend at a yard sale, but I handed it over because I thought: "what a great bonding experience this will be for me and our girls. Who cares that you can just buy a box of spaghetti for 99 cents - they'll love it." And I guess they did, or Lily did for about 5 minutes, so mostly it was me making pasta, then cleaning it up, for probably two hours. It also all got stuck together, so it wasn't all that pretty, but it tasted good - and the receipt was still in there. New that thing cost $175, which I would have paid because I love spending time with our girls, but they don't always want to do what I want them to do. You know what I'm talking about. Father Zebedee would understand. You think ol father Zebedee didn't love having his sons out there with him. You think he didn't have dreams like that optometrist. And now who is he going to pass those nets down to? One of the hired hands who are only after a day's pay? He can't do that. What is he going to do? A hard thing about being a parent is that you can't help but build expectations that you have no control over - and a hard thing about being a child is that you can't help but disappoint your parents even though half the time you don't even know why. But eventually every mother realizes that her sons have to decide on their own, every father realizes that he can't stand in the way of his daughter's dreams, and every child who successfully grows into adulthood has realized that he has to make his own pinewood derby car and even if it loses every race at least he tried and did it on his own. Faith is like that too. Last Monday was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and in a sermon he once told the story of such an experience. For him it wasn't a pinewood derby car that he had to build on his own, but a long night in Birmingham, AL where he needed God, and he had to turn to God on his own. Early in the day, his life and the lives of his wife and children were threatened because the words that he had said and the changes that he supported, inspired someone to throw a brick through his window with a note attached. The note told him that if he didn't stop talking and get out of town, his life and the lives of his wife and children would be in jeopardy. Dr. King wanted nothing more than to have his father by his side, so that he could comfort him, that together they might turn to God in prayer, but his father was about 150 miles away. That night, Dr. King got up and made a pot of coffee because he couldn't sleep and he pondered the brick that had been thrown through the window of the house his wife and children were sleeping in and he began to pray, praying for what he said may have been the first time he had ever really prayed in his life. "My father wasn't there to do it for me," he said, "so I prayed to God myself." All believers must do that. There's an old saying that goes: The Lord doesn't have any grandchildren - and what that means is that developing a relationship with God isn't something that parents can do for their children - because to God, being related to a Christian isn't the same as being one yourself. We all must learn what it means to be the children of God on our own. At some point we must all learn to follow Christ ourselves, even if we've been drug into a church like this one for our entire childhood, at some point we have to get up and go ourselves. We have to make the choice, and for some of us - that means, not just doing it on our own without our parents but following Christ in spite of them. Somebody asked me the other day if my parents were excited when I told them I felt called to the ministry. But my parents knew far too much about the lifestyle that serving God as a pastor requires. So, they weren't excited. They were worried. And still, they talk to us about going up to their house for Christmas, refusing to accept the reality that I'll be preaching every Christmas Eve from now until I retire. But that's nothing really. Consider this daughter. She's the first one in her family to go to college. Some parents would be proud, but hers can't understand and don't see the point. "Come back and mend the nets," she can hear them say. Every church officer who was just ordained and installed probably faced some version of that. A call came from the Officer Nominating Committee asking them to serve this church in a leadership role, and if not in their ear then surely in their head were the voices of spouses telling them, "But we have kids to raise and house to run. Don't say yes, come back and mend the nets." Friends who said, "Someone else will say yes. It doesn't have to be you. Come back and mend the nets." This is life. I was in Confirmation Class years ago, but my friends got the bright idea to skip class and hang out behind the Cotton Building. That was really fun for a while, but at some point, I started feeling real guilty and was easing my way back to where I was supposed to be. "come back here and mend the nets," my friends called - and I told them I'd be right back, I just needed to use the bathroom, because I wasn't strong enough to tell them I wanted to go back to class. If I said that I was leaving them to go to class would they still be my friends, I worried. It costs something, doesn't it? And parents, we raise these children best we can - then we have to let them go and that may mean they move far away, destroying all our plans and expectations, even breaking our hearts. But who can blame them? For when the chance for new life comes walking down the beach calling us to follow, we all have to listen. Amen.

Come and See

Scripture Lessons: 1 Samuel 3: 1-10 and John 1: 43-51 Sermon Title: Come and See Preached on January 14, 2018 Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? What a question. What a human question – and what a relevant question for us to ponder this Sunday morning. You and I know already, that Scripture speaks truth to our world. We get out of bed Sunday after Sunday to hear it. We put the pulpit right here in the center of this great, revered room we call the Great Hall because the Word that Scripture reveals we put right at the center of our lives. That’s why the Beadle carries the Bible in with dignity and respect, because the Beadle knows as we all know that the Bible is not some dusty book passed down from generation to generation, but the most relevant book that we could possibly read. But who would have thought that this book, so ancient and removed from 21st Century America, would lead us to ponder a phrase nearly the same as a statement the President is reputed to have made just a few days ago? Nathanial asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” And allegedly claims the President, “Can anything good come out of a place like Haiti? Can anything good come out of Africa? Isn’t it true that the best people come from Norway or someplace like that?” Those aren’t the words exactly, but you’ve watched the news and heard all about it. Regardless of exactly what was said and by whom, this is a very human assumption. We all try to get to know people and one of the very first questions we ask is, “Where are you from?” as though that could tell us something. My grandfather came from a place called the Caw-Caw Swamp. I’ve never been there, but he’d tell us these stories of how they’d catch turtles and would fatten them up in copper pots before cooking them for dinner. How the teacher would come to the house before the school was built, and there was a door to the front that only the teacher was allowed to use. Then when the school was built, my grandfather was the oldest school age child and so he was chosen to drive the bus. How old was he? “Oh, 12 at least,” I remember him saying. One day he fell asleep on his desk and some kid dropped a bb in his ear, and the story goes that because of the damage done to his ear drum he was never again allowed to swim. I told Dr. Jim Goodlett the story and he told me that a bb would just fall back out again. That a bb is too big to do any real damage considering how narrow the ear canal, but Jim is a real doctor and who knows who my grandfather saw out in the Caw-Caw Swamp? The first time he went to the beach, he told me, he fully expected to look right across the water to see Europe, which doesn’t speak too highly for his school system, and as he started out in business in the nearest city which was Charleston, South Carolina, who knows how many people looked down their noses at him when he told them he was from the Caw-Caw Swamp? I can’t tell you exactly where the Caw-Caw Swamp is, but it is definitely not South of Broad. People think that where you live really means something, so they ask about where you’re from to learn about who you are. And that can be good. But to really get to know someone you have to do something more. You have to go deeper. I’ve been interested to know how strategic some people are about using their Kroger Fuel Points. I ran into Wilkie Schell as I was dropping the girls of at school, and he told me he was checking the gas levels of both their cars, because Libba and Wilkie wait until both cars are on empty before they go to gas up so that they maximize their fuel savings at the Kroger. Amazing. I’ve been to a Christmas Party where the conversation completely revolved around tips for gaining a greater discount at the Kroger gas pumps. That tells you something about a person, though I’m not sure what. Getting to know people. Getting to really know people. How do you do it? We once rented a house from a man named Greg Martin who later told me that he always made a point of looking inside a person’s car before renting him or her a house. And that, for him, was a good way of getting to know someone. So, if you want to know someone: how clean is their car? How much do they care about Kroger Fuel Points? I’ll tell you this: you learn more when you know either of those than when all you know is where a person came from. I was in New York City one summer. I told a man I was from Georgia and he said, “I know.” A friend of mine, his name is Will, and he’s a Presbyterian minister down in Savannah. He went to a boarding school up north and when his roommate learned he was from Tennessee he was surprised that Will owned shoes. You ask someone where they’re from, and what do you learn? Maybe nothing. But what do you assume? A lot. You remember Hee Haw? Grandpa comes down stairs: “Well everybody. I’m getting old. It’s time for me to move up North.” “Why grandpa?” Everyone wants to know. “I figure it’s coming close to my time to leave this earth, and it’s better if we lose one of them than one of us.” Philip says to Nathaniel: “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Stop and listen to that. We think we can learn something about someone based on how long his or her family has lived here or whether they’re from Cherokee or Paulding County. But take note. Jesus the Messiah comes from one of those places that people make assumptions about. However, where he was from didn’t tell Nathaniel anything, because getting to know people, and I mean really getting to know them, is valuable and life-giving, but it isn’t easy. Because you have to turn off the part of your brain that relies on assumptions and operates on fear. You really want to get to know someone you have to do more. You have to move in next door. Here in Marietta, we live close to our neighbors, and this new proximity has made us aware of how loud we are. We have two dogs, and one day I opened up the back door to tell one of them to stop barking, only to hear our next-door neighbor yelling: “Junebug, be quiet.” It’s bad when they know your dog’s name, but unfortunately, or fortunately, our neighbors don’t just know us, they really know us. And that’s what it takes. To really get to know someone have to be around them. You have to know what they eat and where they sleep. You have to see what they’re like when no one is looking or when they think no one is looking, so the Gospel of John begins like this as Eugene Peterson translated it: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” That’s what the Lord did – he moved into the neighborhood. He didn’t rely on assumptions or operate on fear. Out of love he came down here to really get to know us. That’s who God is: A Creator who longs to know his creation. To use the words from our Call to Worship, quoted from Psalm 139: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You are acquainted with all my ways.” God was acquainted with Nathaniel, having knit him together in his mother’s womb. But more than that, the Lord saw him underneath the fig tree. Do you know what that feels like? You leave a message on someone’s voicemail, but instead of hanging up properly like you thought you did at the end of your brief message, you start in on your husband once again and the true state of your marriage is preserved on someone’s cell phone. Or maybe you were in the middle of a sensitive conversation in kitchen when your daughter barges in. You don’t know how long she’s been listening or what all she heard, but you wish that the words that just spilled out of your mouth could be sucked back in. It’s a strange thing to know that you’ve been seen. It’s intimate and makes you feel vulnerable. To be known is this incredible thing, but this is God’s reality and we are wise to remember it. God sees so much that we would rather hide. God knows us at this deep and substantial level. All that we would deny or run away from, he sees and knows. But here’s the big deal: even in knowing all that he comes to earth to get to know us even better – and then – and this is the really big news – even after seeing us for who we really are – God invites us to take part in what God is doing. You can see what an honor that is. The difference that this kind of invitation makes in peoples’ lives. Did you see that picture of a Haitian born cadet who wept as he graduated from West Point? Or did you hear about the boy who grew up in the Caw Caw Swamp to set records in insurance sales for Life of Georgia. Then there’s the kid who was left at a Temple by his mother, raised by a blind old man, bullied by the man’s two sons – but was woken up in the middle of the night because God wanted Samuel to crown Israel’s greatest kings. We are all Nathanial’s – we look down on others because we fear we are nothing ourselves. Forget all that. Let me tell you the truth. You might have come from some place that presidents and disciples would call a back-water or worse, but you are precious in his sight. And, God has some work for you to do. God sees in you the potential that no one else ever saw. God sees the worth that you long ago forgot all about. God knows when you are sleeping and he knows when you’re awake – and the greatest gift he could give he has given and the most important news he entrusts to you that you might proclaim it – just come and see. Just come and see who you really are. Just come and see – and take part in the redeeming work that God is doing in our world. Amen.

Into What Then Were You Baptized

Scripture Lessons: Genesis 1: 1-5 and Mark 1: 4-11 Sermon Title: Into What Then Were You Baptized Preached on January 7, 2018 Some would say that the hardest words to believe in the Bible are those in our first Scripture Lesson: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep… Then God said, “Let there be light.” Science tells us a story about a big bang and an ever-expanding universe, survival of the fittest, natural selection, and for generations now, it’s as though faith and science have been battling it out for a right to the truth. Like me you might say that this is no either or, but maybe you’ve had an argument with your friends about this. Some friend who sees the first two chapters of Genesis as the great stumbling block that keeps them from faith in God – but I say these words in Genesis are no stumbling block. They don’t need to compete with the words of science, because science can tell us things that religion never will, and Scripture provides insights that science cannot, but beyond that, these from Genesis aren’t the hardest words to believe in Scripture anyway. No. If you get right down to it then you know that most people wrestle with not the words of our first scripture lesson, but the words of our second. It was just as he was coming up out of the water, when a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Most people can’t believe that God or anyone else would every say that to them: “You are my Daughter, whom I love, and with you I am well pleased.” “You are my son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.” “You are my husband or my wife, whom I love, and with you I am well pleased.” These words are common enough, but they’re also different from what we’re used to because God’s not saying to Jesus or to us that God has high hopes for who we might become. God’s not saying that once all the laundry is washed or when we get that raise so we can put a pool in the back yard, then God will approve of us. Rather, what God is saying to Jesus in his baptism is that it’s because of who you are right now, that God just has to say, “You are mine. The one I love, and with you I am well pleased.” I know a woman who went on a date set up by one of those match-maker websites. This guy said to her: “You have the exact skill set that I’ve been looking for in a partner.” That’s not very romantic. It sounds more like engineering than love to me, but we hear those kinds of words so often that not all of us are able to let the Good News in. We’re not used to the truth: that in our baptism what God said to Jesus, God says to us as well. That in baptism, God takes us as his own. God loves us as his own. God claims us as his own. With us, even with us, God is well pleased. And Presbyterians, we baptize infants, and we need to stop and think about what that means. What has a four-month-old done to qualify for these words? Nothing, but that’s grace. That’s God’s love, and considering Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, even for Jesus it’s not so different for him than it is for an infant. This morning we read from Chapter 1 of Mark’s gospel – the very first chapter. No miracles precede this baptism. He doesn’t say anything wise to please God so that he deserves this affirmation. Instead, Jesus just walks in the water and God speaks these most important words, because that’s what baptism is. It is undeserved grace and love that some struggle to accept for their entire lives. Like us, he is a child of God. But unlike us, when God tells him so, he is bold to believe it. Like us, God who holds the whole world in his hands also holds tightly this Jesus of Nazareth. But unlike us, Jesus never doubts it. Like us, Jesus hears this Good News, that God is well pleased with who he is. But unlike us these words free him from shame. “You are mine, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” Jesus heard these words. He never doubted them. Even as God called him to face the Cross still he knew who he was, that he was beloved of God. But can you and I let these words in? There’s a power in words. That’s the difference between the Creation account in Genesis and the story Science tells. It’s not that one is right and one is wrong – it’s that science tells us that it’s all about molecules and energy and that’s fine and good, but none of that matters to your soul nearly as much as words do. So, in Genesis God spoke and there was light. That’s the truth, and you know it, because it’s not photons but words that bring light to so much of the darkness that we know. But some never hear them and others can’t believe them. Isn’t that the truth? The 17th Century poet George Herbert, in his third poem titled Love, wrote: “Love bade me welcome, but my soul drew back.” That seems to be the natural human reaction. Valentine’s Day is coming up, and over the years I’ve read a lot of children’s books about Valentine’s Day from the library, but they’re all just about the same. In every one a little girl sends a valentine card to a little boy, then on the playground or somewhere she sneaks up behind him and plants a kiss on his cheek. 100% of the time – in every one of those books - the little boy runs away. Little boys are funny about love. It was when I was in second grade that my teacher asked our class to go home and ask our parents about what is essential for life. It was science class and we were learning about what it takes to survive, so I went home. My parents and I decided on water. “Water is essential for life,” I reported to my class, and was proud to find that this was a good and acceptable answer. “Yes, water is essential for life,” our teacher responded. Then a girl in the class answered oxygen, which was also a good answer. Then another said food. The teacher approved and said that food is also essential for life. A boy in the row behind me reported that love was essential for life. I couldn’t get my head around that, so I went home and asked my Mom. She agreed with the boy and told me that no one could live without love which didn’t make any sense to me at the time, so I went to my father and he told me that the boy’s parents must be hippies. Love. It’s essential, but sometimes it’s easier to joke about, so the poem from George Herbert continues: “Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back… But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack… Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked anything.” The poet answers: I lack what would make me worthy. There’s the real challenge. Like the poet we say: Surely, I’m not worthy of love. I should have to pay for it, work for it, aspire to one day deserve it. But what if it’s just like the Gospel of Mark says it is? What if all you have do is come up from the water and hear the words? Words are powerful. God speaks them and the earth is created. And God speaks them in baptism and our lives are changed completely if we’ll let the power of the words do their work. So, if your earthly father never said them, or never said them enough, then hear them said to you by your Heavenly Father: “You are mine.” Or if you’ve struggled to believe them, because love showed up and then walked away, know that the God who came to earth to say them through his life isn’t going anywhere, least of all away from you: “You are mine, my beloved.” The God of love, he came to earth, and when he came up out of the water he heard these words, he let them in. And for the rest of his life he poured these words out, saying to his disciples, “Take and eat. This is my body broken for you. Drink. Here is my love poured out for you to take in. You are mine, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” May these words free you to stop working so hard to deserve them, because you can’t. May these words free you to be yourself, for until you can you’ll never be satisfied. And may these words create in you a desire for new life, because we can’t be saved from our sin until we accept the truth that we are worth saving. Amen.