Let the Same Mind Be in You

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Matthew 25: 31-46 Sermon Title: Let the Same Mind Be in You Preached on November 22, 2020 Today is Christ the King Sunday; this is a Sunday which reminds us who is truly king, who we owe allegiance, who it is that can lead us to a better place than the one we find ourselves in right now, and what this true king requires of us. We’re all serving somebody, but who, and what do they require? Sara and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix. Season four is now out. I don’t know about you, but when there’s anything new to watch on TV I get terribly excited. Margaret Thatcher shows up in season 4, and so does Diana, and it’s the ending of their first episode together that I’d now like to ruin for you if you haven’t already seen it. Please forgive me. Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, shows up to spend some time with the royal family at their castle in Scotland. It’s a hard thing to go up and spend some time at anyone’s home because you may not know all the rules: what’s dinner attire, should we have brought something, does everyone come down to breakfast still in their pjs? Such waters become exponentially more difficult to navigate when you are in the home of the English Royal Family. The Prime Minister and her husband know all that, so they’re visibly nervous about meeting the standards of their host, the Queen, as they’re shown to their rooms, and they can immediately tell that here the rules are different from what they’re accustomed to because when in Scotland spouses in the home of the royal family don’t sleep in the same bed or even stay in the same bedroom. Fortunately, there is an itinerary for their stay. It’s been printed and placed on a table, so they know that the next gathering is that evening, though it’s not clear if one should come down to drinks at 6:00 already dressed for dinner, which is black tie. The Thatcher’s decided to go down prepared for dinner. However, when they come down for drinks at 6:00 in their formal attire they join the royal family who’s just come in from stalking a stag. They’re all muddy in their hiking boots and are surprised by what the Thatcher’s have on. You see, they’re already falling short. The next day the Queen invites the Prime Minister to go out to stalk this stag. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister only brought her sensible heels, which is the wrong footwear for traversing the Scottish Highlands. That evening, the Royal Family plays parlor games. Margaret Thatcher doesn’t play parlor games. Basically, it’s all a failure for the Thatcher’s. The Prime Minister is judged harshly, and she goes home early, defeated. Then the young woman who would be Princess Diana shows up. She makes everyone laugh, she spots the stag they’ve been stalking, she wins at parlor games, and it’s clear that she’s done what she needed to have done to gain the approval of the Royal Family. Only, at the end of the episode as the paparazzi learns that Diana is the prince’s new love interest. They begin to surround her with their flashing cameras as servants back in Scotland are hanging the mounted stag’s head on the wall, and it becomes clear that while Diana has been accepted, her acceptance comes at a cost. We all bow before somebody, but whose acceptance are we working for? Princess Diana had the perfect wedding by royal standards. Do you remember how long the train was on her gown that nearly filled up Westminster Abby? She met their expectations, she rose to the occasion, but she walked down the aisle and married a man who loved another woman. Sometimes we serve masters who seem to offer salvation, so we grovel before them and rise to their expectations, but what do they really give? Today is Christ the King Sunday; a Sunday which reminds us who is truly king, and who can lead us to a better place than the one we find ourselves in right now. Considering where we are right now, I wonder if life feels to you anything like it must have felt to Moses and the Israelites, standing on the beach, with the Egyptian army closing in. There’s nowhere to go, as we can’t just march through the sea. Life isn’t normal but neither has the road back to normal been made clear. God will save us, but we must wait, and we must not turn on each other while we wait or there won’t be anything left for him to save. Hear what he requires of those whom he’ll lead across the sea and into the Promised Land: Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. His point is that how we treat each other, maybe especially in a climate where nothing goes exactly as it should, matters most. Yet, some make rising to the same standards of perfection set by human society which were unattainable before all this started their chief priority, prompting the question: who do we really serve? Our wedding wasn’t like Diana’s. I’ve been thinking about our wedding because last Monday was our 18th wedding anniversary. The ceremony was supposed to be outside, but it rained. I was given this one job: find someone who can sing, and I did, only I’d never asked to hear him sing and while he did sing, he shouldn’t have. There was a band, but they spent all their time eating rather than playing, and they didn’t know the words to the song we wanted them to play for our first dance, so we used a CD only the CD skipped. In so many ways we failed to rise to the standards in our minds. Certainly, this was no Royal Wedding, but we love each other. We still do, and it is by the standard of how well we all love each other that we will be judged by the King of Kings. Not everyone seems to know that but notice how he just comes right out and says it, “I’m King of Kings, and if you want me to welcome you into my kingdom, pay attention to the least of these. Wear sensible high heels all you want, just pay attention to the poor.” Is he the one whose acceptance we are working for? In our world today it’s getting even harder to follow the social protocol, because it’s not university accepted what we should be doing. It reminds me of that wonderful line about the chaos of the time of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all people did what was right in their own eyes.” And so, some wear masks and some don’t. You’ll be judged by someone either way. Our world is so full of judgement. An old preacher used to say that far too many church goers have grown used to having Kentucky Fried Pastor for lunch after worship. They gather around the table to debate how long or how short the sermon. The congregation judges the preacher, the preacher judges the congregation, husbands judge their wives, wives judge their husbands, sisters judge each other, sometimes we judge just to have something to talk about with friends. Only then we even judge ourselves. We don’t just look in the mirror. No, we look in the mirror and we compare ourselves to some standard. Do I look young enough? Do I look trim enough? Am I pretty enough? Every student in High School does the same thing. She thinks about what she’ll wear and how she’ll act, because she knows she’s being judged and watched, not just graded by her teachers but also assed as worthy or unworthy based on her looks. I’d like to say that at some point it gets easier. It does, but it also never ends until we settle on whose acceptance we’re willing to work for. Let it be the one who will have final judgement over you. Consider, not what this world wants from you, but what He requires: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. That’s what finally matters. That’s how you’ll make perfect memories. That’s what really fulfills us and makes us people we’re proud to be. How do you treat people? Our wedding was perfect, because the woman I’m married to is who I love. I don’t always wear the right clothes, or do the right things, but ultimately, I’ll not be judged by my clothes or my deeds, I’ll be judged by the standards set by the God of love. May the same mind be in you, that was in the Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, Did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. We are all standing on the shore, and the only way to get to the Promised Land is for God to deliver us, but what we do now matters. We only have the power to treat each other well, and by our love they’ll know we are Christians. Amen.

Misjudging the Master

Scripture Lessons: 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11 and Matthew 25: 14-30 Sermon title: Misjudging the Master Preached on 11/15/2020 As you well know, Jesus often taught using parables, and a parable is what we just read. Generally speaking, a parable is one way he helps us to understand heavenly things. By using things, we already knew something about, like oil and lamps, mustard seeds, rebellious sons, or in this case, slaves, money, investments, and a master, Jesus helps us to understand something that we don’t know very much about, like God, for example. I just made the statement that we don’t know very much about God. The thing is, maybe we think we do. That’s why it went so badly with the third slave. He didn’t understand what he was to do with what he had been given, nor did he understand the one who gave it. There were three slaves. Each was given a very large sum of money. What our Bible calls a “talent” was about a year’s salary for a day laborer, only remember that these three were slaves. As slaves, they had nothing, so think about what it must have been like to hold all that money. To have had a full salary all at once would have been intoxicating to a person who expected to work a full lifetime without receiving any pay. Just think about it. Have you ever been to an old plantation turned museum? You go through the big house and maybe there’s furniture and candelabra. Maybe you see what all the master and his family would have owned: toys in the nursery, glass mirrors, and polished doorknobs. Then you go out to where the slaves’ quarters once stood. There are cabins with a dirt floor; maybe a table, a chair, and a pallet in the corner. It’s likely that an archaeologist excavated the area find what’s left by the people who lived there, only all that this archaeologist found was a button, a clay pipe, and a broken glass bottle. Can you imagine what it would feel like if all you owned in the whole wide world was a glass bottle, but then you’re given a full year’s wages, times two or even five? What do you do with all that money? What do you do with anything so huge that comes into your possession? Maybe you just hold onto it, without knowing what to do. That’s a problem, because it’s possible to ruin things by holding on to them too tightly. Consider the transition of power. We know that democracy works best when politicians remember that their primary task is to serve the people rather than get themselves re-elected, yet so many hold onto their office as though the point of having political power were maintaining it. They hold onto the talents God has given them too tightly, and so they disappoint the master. That can happen. Maybe that’s happening right now. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Editorial board, at least a couple politicians have questioned the integrity of our recent elections without any real evidence. Are they doing our country any favors if they hold onto political power breaking our trust in the electoral process? Or thinking of the parable: does the master entrust these slaves with such huge gifts that they just hold onto what they’ve been entrusted with? No. In fact, I believe the parable teaches us that the master desires something much bigger than that. Two of the slaves risk losing what the master gave them so that what’s his flourishes and grows, which makes me think of what’s happened here in Cobb County. Maybe you say that Roy Barnes was quoted in Around Town last Wednesday in the Marietta paper. You know Roy Barnes. He’s a Methodist, but that’s OK. What struck me about what all he said last Wednesday is how he talked about how important it was for him to do what was best, not for his party, but for our county when he served as the State Senate floor, even though what he was doing was likely to cost him an election: One of the great things about Cobb County is that even when the Democrats and Republicans were changing from Democrats to Republicans, there was one thing that we had in common. If it affected Cobb County and was good for Cobb County, all of us were going to support it, whether it was Democratic or Republican. He told about building Barrett Parkway and the East-West Connector. Can you imagine if those weren’t there? Rather than take credit for these great road building projects which opened up our country to business and new residents, he said, “It was all of us working together.” But once Joe Mack Wilson, a republican, told Barnes, who is a democrat, “Now you realize what all this is doing? It’s just going to bring in more Republicans.” And Barnes responded, “Yes, that’s probably true, but Joe, we’ve got to do it. We’re going to do what’s best for Cobb County regardless.” That’s it, isn’t it? “If you’re going to grow, if you’re going to prosper,” you’ve got to do what’s best rather than just hold on to what you have, burying it where no one else can benefit from it, for sometimes fighting to maintain what you have is the best way to lose it all. There were three slaves. The one who was given five took his talents and made five more. The one who was given two took his talents and made two more. Then the one who was given one took his talent and buried it in the ground. What do you see here? Maybe you see two whom you’d like to hire as your wealth advisor. On the other hand, maybe you see that two were willing to take a risk with what wasn’t theirs while the third was cautious and conservative. Or maybe you see that two acted purely out of love for their master with little concern to whether or not they’d disappoint him while the third acted completely out of fear. Has fear ever played such a role in your life? Sometimes you fear that you might lose what you have, so you hold on too tightly. Sometimes you fear disappointing anyone, but you end up disappointing everyone. Sometimes you fear failure, so you never really try. That’s the culture in some households. That’s how some people were raised. Their mother couldn’t stand the thought of a broken plate or a cavity. I grew up in a house where mistakes were OK, and so was breaking things. In fact, if there wasn’t a flat head screwdriver handy, my Dad would grab a butter knife from the silverware drawer. If we were having guests over and needed more place settings, my Mom might send us to the sandbox to collect all the missing spoons. However, not every household is like that. In some kitchen’s children start crying as soon as a glass slips out of their hands because they know that making a mess is just cause for condemnation. The third slave assumed his master was like that, and so he explaigns: Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours. What I love is how the master responds: You knew, did you. You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? You knew, that I’d punish you if you messed up? You knew that I’m harsh and ungenerous. Where did you get that idea? From the year’s wages that I gave you for no reason? What we have here in this parable is a failure to communicate, because this slave is sure that he knows the master, while being completely and horribly wrong. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever misjudged the master? I do that all the time. Let me give you an example. You might know this, but we have the most incredible food distribution ministry. The School Board recognized our church at their meeting last week. Rev. Cassie Waits and Aimee Bush were there to be recognized and thanked. Aimee has been running a tight ship, organizing a great team of volunteers, and even driving a great big refrigeration truck that holds our milk and chicken while we give it out. The need is great. Right now, people are diving here from the Six Flags area because there are so few places who are able to distribute food during this pandemic. Every Monday, enough food for 1,500 meals is dropped off at the church from the Atlanta Food Bank. Can you imagine what 1,500 meals worth of spaghetti looks like? I’ve told you that we’ve distributed more than 200,000 lbs. of food, which is hard to quantify. The better visual is a line of cars that fills up our main parking lot, and then circles the big parking lot across the tracks. We provide several days’ worth to 250 families every Monday. We’re talking about hundreds of cars, yet one volunteer, Fran Brailsford, knows all their faces and remembers so many of their names. I was standing out there with Fran and Andria Freund. Andria has to watch traffic, so that she can send cars down Kennesaw from our North Parking lot into our main parking lot without stopping the flow of traffic. It’s quite a process, and it’s a lot of cars, so I assumed that when a neighbor who lives right by our church called to talk about the food distribution, he was calling to ask why it was taking him so long to get home from work, and if I could do anything about all these cars backing up traffic. Why would I assume that? Because when people call me, sometimes I assume they’re calling me with a problem. When the principle calls you to her office you don’t assume it’s to receive a lollypop, likewise, sometimes people call me, and if they say, “Joe, I’d like to talk with you about something,” my first impulse is to think it’s bad, only when I returned this wonderful man’s phone call he told me that he’d like to donate $7,500 to feed even more people than we are already. Why do we live in such fear? Why do we misjudge the master, when the master has already done so much for us? In a culture of fear, we must remember who are master is and what he intends for us, so I remind you of these words from our First Scripture Lesson: God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t misjudge the Master. Don’t mistake his intention for you. Don’t fail to see his hand at work in your life. Don’t ignore the sound of his voice proclaiming his undying love, for his is our God and has Destined us not for wrath but salvation. Amen.

When the Lights Go Out

Scripture Lessons: 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18 and Matthew 25: 1-13 Sermon Title: When the Lights Go Out Preached on November 8, 2020 I asked Lynne Sloop, a great leader in our congregation, how she and her husband Bob had weathered the tropical storm that went through Cobb County week before last. Lynne said they were fine, but she was humbled, as losing electricity always seems to show her that she’s a little less self-sufficient than she thought she was. I liked that response. I could relate to it, because the same was true for us. We were fine, but we were humbled, because that tropical storm forced us to recognize that our lives are little luxurious compared to how our ancestors lived. My grandfather was raised in a place called the Caw-Caw Swamp. That’s in the low-country of South Carolina. He was born at home in their cabin, premature, so without a NICU to rush him off to, his mother had to make do. She heated bricks in the fire, made a pallet for him on the floor, and stacked the warmed bricks around him, making her own incubator without a hospital or even electricity. On the other hand, Friday before last, when I woke up in a dark house because the power was out, our automatic coffee maker didn’t have my coffee waiting for me like usual. That was hard for me to deal with. It only takes a power-outage to show me that not all my wicks are trimmed and burning. There’s not oil in all my lamps. In fact, there weren’t even batteries in all my flashlights, because I wasn’t expecting a storm to come, and I wasn’t ready. Were you ready? Not everybody is, and that’s part of the point with this parable from the Gospel of Matthew: Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. It sounds like this is the parable of the Boy Scouts. The ones who lived by that motto: “Be prepared,” were ready. They were wise. The ones who weren’t expecting the bridegroom to take so long were left in the dark, for they didn’t bring enough oil with them. However, maybe we should cut them some slack. For one thing, he didn’t tell them when he would arrive. Through this parable he’s telling us, “I’m coming. Be ready, but you don’t know the time or the hour.” Not knowing when does make his arrival hard to prepare for, only life is full of these situations where we walk into the unexpected. When that happens, some wind up looking prepared and some are caught on their heels. It’s been that way during the pandemic. Kroger sold out of dried beans and yeast. That’s good for them. On the other hand, Jack’s New York Deli is closed. I walked past their store front last Thursday morning and it makes me sad to think about how I’ll never again taste their outlaw sandwich or their French fries. What’s happened during this epidemic has changed our economy, and it seems as though some were ready and some were not. I was talking with Tom Clarke who manages investments for a living. Who would have thought that there’d need to be a business that allows people to have meetings at home? I don’t know who knew we’d need Zoom, but I can tell you, they’re rich right now, because those who end up prepared for unforeseen circumstances profit. Five of the bridesmaids had oil reserves, and we ought to be happy for them. In fact, we ought to be happy too, for all the ways our church was prepared for what we’re going through right now. Consider the cameras, lights, and all the livestream technology we have in this room. Looking back to when we asked you to fund the capital campaign to pay for all this stuff, surely some of you thought, “We’ll never need all that. Church on the internet? That sounds crazy!” In a way, it did to me too, but when the quarantine hit back in March, my parent’s church up in Bryson City, North Carolina, was busy trying to figure out how to livestream a worship service for the very first time. My dad was buying an iPad to stream the service and their preacher was all frustrated by being recorded. Me, down here in this place, I was like Benny Hinn. We already had it all together, and when it comes to the worship service, we never really missed a beat. The unexpected came, but we were ready, kind of like the wise bridesmaids. Then the city schools asked us if we’d be willing to help them distribute milk and produce out of our parking lot. A group of ladies started sowing facemasks. More than 200,000 pounds of food and more than 2,000 masks later I knew that we had become a church in a virtual world, still changing lives with faith, hope and love, but it was the love part that had me worried. It still does. Our church motto is, “changing lives with faith, hope, and love,” but it’s hard to love your neighbor if you don’t really know your neighbor. In this world that’s already pretty isolating, and now under a pandemic that mandates isolation, I’ve been worried about how well we could love each other, because there are a whole bunch of us who barely know each other. We asked these folks to become neighborhood group leaders. Some of them said, “I emailed my group, but none of them wrote me back.” Another said, “I called all ten households in my neighborhood group, but the first three I called all said they’re going to a different church.” That makes it hard. Only, think about how important it is to have connections. When the power went out one family in our church called their neighborhood group leader, who invited them to come on over and put everything from their freezer in hers. When the power goes out, it because clear, that we need each other. But not everyone has someone they can call, so Home Depot has a run on generators, which is fine, so long as Home Depot’s open. This is what happened in the parable: As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out and meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came. Here’s the question that this parable demands we ask: were they foolish because they didn’t bring enough oil, or were they foolish because they ran off to the store in the middle of the night? Were they foolish because they weren’t prepared, or were they foolish because they panicked? Were they foolish because they looked within themselves and said, “I don’t have enough,” or were they foolish because they thought they could find what they needed to fill up their lack at the corner store? I tell you: the Light of the World is coming. You’re not going to need your lamp. Just don’t run away. He can bring light to all our darkness. Just don’t panic. Let him come. I feel sure that this isn’t really a parable just about self-sufficiency, because if we could make it through this life by hording enough to keep the lights on than what did Christ die for? If all that was required of a disciple was being ready for anything, then we should shut this church down and turn it into a discount mart for end of the world preppers. My friends, he died for us because he loved us before we were worthy of his love. He died to save us before we were worth saving. We baptize little infants because that’s what God’s love is like. We are all helpless, unprepared, broken down, and lost in the darkness. So, I say they were foolish, not because they weren’t prepared, they were foolish because they were ashamed. They responded to Christ, not with faith, but anxiety. The light of the world was running late, and they thought he’d reject them because they’re wasn’t enough oil in their lamps, but what does the light of the world need with an oil lamp? We get in so much trouble preparing for a feast, putting our houses in order, trying to look ready, that we keep out the one who could make us clean. I was walking around the neighborhood on election night and I saw, because I’m nosey enough to look in people’s windows, that one of my neighbors already has her Christmas Tree up. It’s as though we’re all getting ready early so we can still have the perfect Christmas, but I tell you this, you can buy out Hobby Lobby to deck your every hall, you can pressure your parents into coming into your house even though they’re afraid, you can push right through the wall of every restriction put on us to be more prepared for Christmas than you’ve ever been, but what are all your preparations compared to the reality that the Son of God is born unto us? The foolish ones were worried about their oil, but the wise ones didn’t even need to use it, because this God of ours is at work among us, so stop trying so hard to make things perfect. You don’t have to. Stop trying so hard to make Thanksgiving special. It already is, so don’t miss out on the whole thing by running back and forth to Kroger. There are moments in life that we miss for trying to be completely prepared. Think about how hard people work to get ready for new babies. Every father spends so much time rushing back and forth to Baby’s Are Us, it seems like the baby could be walking before the nursery’s finished. I read a great article about thankfulness. The author confessed: In my house, as I am sure it is with many others, conversation, as well as anxiety and flat out worry, surrounds the questions about how are we going to reenact all of our Holiday traditions? Can we gather with family and friends? Will we all wear masks right up until the Thanksgiving Turkey is carved and then eat our dinner, keeping appropriate distance from one another? Will we be able to have Christmas Eve Worship without holding our lit candles while we sing Silent Night with our church family? And pretty quickly we find that we have a knot in our stomach that we can’t untie, and our frustrations and anxiety grow with every passing moment. We can’t be ready. We can’t be perfectly prepared, so just be present. God has this under control, so take a breath. Back to the storm: our power was out. It was on and off for a couple days. There was a great big tree leaning on our power line. However, there were so many other emergencies to deal with, it took two days for the truck to pull up and start working on it. First it was three of them walking down our road. I saw the tallest of the three, pointing up at the trees to the other two. It really looked like this guy knew what he was doing. After a while, I walked down there to watch, and that tall guy walks up to me, looking at me like he’s trying to place my face. “What do you do for a living?” he asked. I didn’t know why he was asking. Did he need more help? Did I look like I could handle a chainsaw, or was he ready for me to get out of the way? “I’m a preacher,” I told him. “At First Presbyterian church?” he asked. It turns out this man, who’s crew got our power back on goes to church with us every Sunday on Facebook. His name is Steve Graham. He’s married to Janet, who I met at a Civitan meeting with Elizabeth Manning, and there we were, standing in the street, face to face. I kept on thanking him for getting our power back on. Guess what he said, “You just keep preaching. You don’t know how much good that does me. I’m glad to repay the favor.” There is plenty of light out there in the world. So, stop trying so hard to make it perfect, don’t try to make this year just like last year, and don’t give up because it’s not how you imagined it would be. Instead, rest and wait as you are, and let him do what he does best. For when the lights go out, the light of the world shows up. Amen.

Who Are These?

Scripture Lessons: 1 John 3: 1-3 and Revelation 7: 9-17 Sermon Title: Who Are These? Preached on November 1, 2020 Last Sunday my brother was in town and we were all having lunch, outside, after church at McCallister’s by the hospital. We were discussing etiquette and appropriate wardrobe for Zoom meetings. Because he’s now an English Composition professor at a community college in Charlotte, teaching all his classes on-line rather than in person, one of our girls asked him if he ever taught his classes while wearing pjs. Generally, we agreed that wearing pjs to teach a college class sends the wrong message, but my brother and our girls also thought it would be nice if there was a line of formal pjs, that looked sort of like a suit and tie to wear while lecturing a class from home during a pandemic. (If someone takes this idea and runs with it, just tithe back 10% to the church, please.) My point is that clothes matter this way. What you have on says a lot about you. I once met a pastor who had served great big churches in great big cities and I asked him, “What should I be working on as I prepare for a life in ordained ministry?” Thinking he might emphasize a healthy prayer life or a disciplined routine for studying Scripture, instead he looked at my outfit and told me to shine my shoes. “People judge you by what you wear. If you want people to think that you’re taking ministry seriously, show them by dressing seriously.” That’s what he said, and I think he’s right about that. I’ve challenged myself to live by that advice and I’ve repeated his words more than once, only consider what the saints were wearing. We’ve just read a beautiful passage of Scripture from the book of Revelation. I believe it’s this passage that inspired the hymn: When the Saints Go Marching In. Here in Revelation is this great multitude, made up of all tribes and peoples and languages. Surely, we all want to be in that number, but what does it take? What is required? Do you have to shine your shoes to be one of the saints in light? No. That’s not it. Notice what they’re wearing. Their wardrobe is explained by one of the elders: “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.” Their wardrobe says a lot about them, though what their white robes mean isn’t necessarily obvious, so let me try and clarify. I always wear white, pressed shirts to lead worship. When I’m getting dressed, I flip up the collar to put on my tie. (This isn’t a clip-on.) However, because I’m not very good at shaving, sometimes I’ll get a little blood on my collar, and if it’s too obvious I’ll put that shirt aside to get another, for in this case a spot of blood is an imperfection. For them, having been washed in the blood of Christ’s sacrifice, it is their salvation, as his death washes away all imperfection. His blood makes us clean and new. It is because he died that we are saved, not because we are perfect. So often when we think about being a saint, and oh, how I want to be in that number, we think about being good, pure, steadfast, and holy, only that’s not what makes this multitude different. That’s not what set them apart. It’s that they’ve been washed in his sacrifice. It’s that they’ve accepted his mercy. It’s that they’re not waiting until their world is perfect to stop and sing. They know who is in control, so even as the sky falls, they’re singing praises already. Notice how they sing. Notice what they’re wearing. Consider what they’ve been through. We read that “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal.” What was that? Some might say that we’re in the middle of one right now. Some of you are working hard to get out of it, by urging your friends to wear their masks so that this virus gets under control or making sure that your friends vote so that we’re either delivered from tyranny or protected from it, depending on your political persuasion. How did they make it through their great ordeal? You may know that the book of Revelation was written in the time of the Roman Empire, and when the book speaks of evil at work in the world and the rule of the anti-Christ, it’s the Roman Empire which Revelation refers to, however, we keep reading this book, hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, because Christians in every age must struggle to live in a society that doesn’t always reflect their values. The question for us today, is what are we to do and what do we learn from them? Are we saved once we’ve fought back all the evil? Are we saved once we’ve voted all the right people into office? Are we saved once we’ve finally created a holy society and a more perfect union, with shoes shined and clean white shirts? Certainly, many act as though this were the case, for some will storm the streets next week if the vote doesn’t go their way. Is that what it takes to be a Saint? Some of you have voted already. Others of you will vote on Tuesday. I don’t feel that it’s appropriate for me as your preacher to tell you who you ought to vote for, though I do have a strong opinion, because politics is not my area of expertise. This is: the one who will be elected might be president but he’s not really in control. Regardless of who wins, he might think he’s running the show, but he reports to a higher power. Some think that “if our man wins,” everything is going to turn in our favor, and if the other wins, the world will fall apart while the Saints know that Christ has already saved and redeemed them. We have to remember that. Politically, we’re a split congregation. Half of you are going to be disappointed this week. Some of you are going to watch the results come in and you’ll worry about the future of our nation. Some of you are going to wish your spouse didn’t vote for the other guy and cancelled your vote out. If you find yourself devastated on November 5th or whenever all the votes are really counted, the ones who trust only in human power will storm the streets but the Saints among us will remember that God is in control. If the next president is good, great. Glory to God. But if he’s bad, God will still be at work, revealing the sins of our nation and reminding us that we were fools to put so much trust in one mortal. That’s the difference: some of us think the world and the future rests in our hands, while Saints are always putting their trust, not in human power but in God’s, regardless. So, I hope you’ll vote. I hope you’ll vote like the future depends on it, because it does. But I also hope you’ll sing, because God is in control. I hope you’ll stand up for what you believe in, because you are powerful, but I also hope you’ll kneel to pray, because you are not all powerful. I also hope you’ll choose your candidates and advocate for them, but remember that there’s a whole multitude of people up there whom we must join, and if we don’t get better at unity now we’re going to have a long learning curve once we get to heaven. Today we’ll name those of our congregation who joined the ranks of that great multitude this past year. What we’ll remember about them is not just what they did or failed to do. All their accomplishments and all their sins are nothing compared to this one commonality: they were washed in the blood of the lamb. Knowing that he can do for us what we could never do for ourselves, we remember those who have died, not with sorrow only. We’ll remember them knowing that they join that great multitude who has been welcomed into everlasting life because of the power of God. A man in a former church named Rufus Ross gave me a small booklet full of tips for writing difficult letters. It includes an example for help in writing that most difficult of letters, the acknowledgement at the time of death. This one is from Benjamin Franklin, which he wrote to a friend who had just lost his son to suicide: We have lost a most dear and valuable friend. But it is the will of God and nature, that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life… Death is that way. A mangled painful limb, which cannot be restored, we willingly cut off. He who plucks out a tooth, parts with it freely, since the pain goes with it, and he who quits the whole body parts at once with all pains and possibilities of pains and diseases which it was liable to, or capable of making him suffer. Our friend and we were invited abroad on a party of pleasure, which is to last forever. His chair was ready first, and he is gone before us. We could not all conveniently start together, and why should you and I be grieved at this, since we are soon to follow and know where to find him? Their chairs were ready first, but we are soon to follow. Notice their robes and be washed in the blood of the lamb. Lean not on your own understanding or your own strength, for we are all limited in our understanding and we are all fading away like grass. May our legacy be, not what we fought for or held onto, but who we trusted. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground in sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. Amen.