The Mob Won't Silence His Voice

Scripture Lessons: Daniel 6: 6-16 and Acts 21: 27-36 Sermon title: The Mob Won’t Silence His Voice Preached on July 24, 2022 Everyone looks for affirmation, I think. I’ve read that dogs do especially. Apparently, a dog would rather hear her owner say, “That’s a good girl,” than get a dog treat. However, while people and dogs like to hear that we’re doing a good job, not every person gets the affirmation that they want from the people they seek to get it from. There’s a sad story about Janis Joplin, who went to her 10th high school reunion looking for something she didn’t get. I grew up listening to Janis Joplin. My favorite song was the one that goes, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.” Do you know that one? It’s a great song. After recording that hit and several others, touring the country, and being celebrated by fans from coast to coast, Janis Joplin went home to Port Arthur, Texas for her 10-year high school reunion. She was 27 years old and was in that unique position of being a person who had defied the odds. She left her small town as an outcast but was returning as a celebrity. In high school, she was overweight, had bad acne, and because she spoke out about civil rights, her classmates thought she was weird and would throw pennies at her. Maybe with revenge on her mind, or maybe with a secret hope that she might finally be loved and accepted by the people who had rejected her, she went home. She walked into the reunion hippie-style, loose white blouse, purple and pink feathers in her hair, oversized tinted glasses, and a bounty of bracelets jangling on each wrist. As she entered the high school gym, which probably smelled exactly as it did when she was a student, her classmates backed away, whispered about her, snickered, and some say she felt the same rejection she had felt in high school all over again. That’s a heart-breaking story, but it’s even worse with the Apostle Paul. Paul went to Jerusalem in our second Scripture lesson. He went to visit James to give his report. There are several people named James in the Bible. This James that Paul went to visit was the brother of Jesus. James and the others heard what he had to say. The report could not have been more glowing. Thousands of converts. Hundreds of miles covered. Sermons preached. Prayers prayed. Churches growing. The power of God on display. Yet after all that, Paul didn’t just feel the same cold rejection Janis Joplin did as he walked into Jerusalem and met with James the brother of Jesus, he ended up in chains. There he stood after all his traveling out in the world. Despite his success, a group from Asia had stirred up the whole crowd. They seized Paul, shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place; more than that, he has brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” They should have been carrying him around on their shoulders for what he’d done out in the world. Instead, they dragged him out of the temple and began to beat him just outside the temple doors. Roman soldiers approached, arrested him, bound him with two chains, and then asked the crowd, “What has he done?” I could have answered. He has spread the Gospel. He has preached the Good News. He has built Christ’s Church. Yet some in the crowd shouted one thing, some another. As the Roman soldiers couldn’t sort out fact from fiction, they were going to take him away, but before he was gone from the crowd, he addressed them. “Brothers and fathers,” he began. Just that salutation is enough to break my heart. Brothers and fathers. He reminds me of every son who worked and worked for his father’s blessing, never to get it. After going away from home, he returns – with a promotion and a new car. Dad takes a look and says, “Why’d you buy a red car? You’re going to get pulled over,” and goes back to reading the paper or whatever it is that he was doing. We all want affirmation, only not every son gets it from his father. Likewise, Paul went to Jerusalem, to see the heads of the Church, and is met, not with a parade, but a lynch mob, as though he were the little sister who looked up to her older sister only to be dismissed or humiliated. We all want affirmation, though not every person gets it from those they want to get it from. Children listen for words of affirmation from their parents and don’t always hear them. Sometimes, innocent men stand in the halls of justice and wind up in chains. My friend Chris Harrison gave me a book about that. It’s by Anthony Ray Hinton. It’s called The Sun Does Shine. They made a movie about the author’s life told by his attorney, Bryan Stevenson, called Just Mercy, but the story is a hard one to hear because Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested in 1985, charged with two counts of murder in Alabama, and he sat isolated in a narrow cell until he was released on April 3rd, 2015. Today, he is one of the longest-serving condemned prisoners facing execution in this country to be proved innocent and released. What happens to a man when the country he grew up in turns on him like that? Janis Joplin went home looking for approval. Just weeks later, she’s found dead. Can rejection kill you? Of course, it can. Yet Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested by police officers who thought he was guilty and was tried by a judge and jury who saw him as a criminal; even while he received no affirmation of his innocence, his mother believed him, and that made all the difference. Some look for affirmation from people who never give it, yet how much affirmation does one person really need? Paul went to Jerusalem and ended up in chains, yet while in chains, “Brothers and fathers,” he addressed the crowd. Then he told them the story that mattered more than any other story: the story of how Jesus walked into his life. So etched in his mind was the story of how Jesus changed his life that his parting words to the crowd that turned on him were a testimony. I was a persecutor of Christians, he said. On the road, Jesus spoke to me. He called me by name. Then He made me physically blind, as physically blind as I had been morally blind. To heal me came a disciple named Ananias. He picked me up, got me baptized, and gave me a reason to live. Do what you want to me, but from Jesus and Ananias, I have been affirmed, and for me, that is more than enough. Who was it for you? Who affirmed you? For me, over the past five years, it’s been too many to count. Five years ago when we first were asked to come back here to Marietta by the search committee, one of the first to call me to tell me he was thankful I was coming was Dr. Jim Speed. That call meant a lot because, having grown up in this church, Dr. Speed was my pastor. As soon as we got here, Flora and he had us all over to their house. After my first year, they took us out to dinner. A few years ago, when we had nine funerals in three weeks, he called me. Amid the pandemic, he called again. Those two have prayed for me and believed in me, and yesterday they sent me an email that said: I want to emphasize again on this five-year mark how proud I am to have been your pastor and to be now your colleague in ministry. It is so great to have Sara and the two girls growing up to be young ladies among us. We cannot make the reception tomorrow but will be there most enthusiastically in spirit. Do you know the difference that kind of affirmation can make? Should I die tomorrow, I’d go proudly, knowing that I made Jim and Flora Speed proud. That’s the difference that a person can make in another’s life. For Paul, it was Ananias and Jesus. For Anthony Ray Hinton, it was his mother. For me, it’s been this church, but not everyone has this. So, that’s your assignment. Each week this summer, we’ve been sent out into the world as Paul and the disciples were. Today, we’re sending letters to the jail. There are men and women in the Cobb County jail who need encouragement, and I ask you to write them because just having one person in your corner can be more than enough. There are pens and paper out in the gathering area, and I encourage you to just write a few words. Just start out with “Dear friend. You are more than the clothes on your back. You are a child of God. The doors may be locked around you, but your future is open. Don’t let your situation tell you who you are; only the One who created you can do that, and He still calls you beloved, redeemed, and precious.” That’s it. Sign if you want. We’ll deliver them over to the jail. The men and women there will be blessed to receive them because we all look for it. That’s the difference between Paul and Janis Joplin. They were both beloved, but Paul knew it. Janis was still looking for it. Remind someone that he is loved by Jesus in this imperfect world, and you’ll proclaim the Good News of the Gospel, which gives us the affirmation we need to change the world. Amen.

Finding God among the Idols

Scripture Lessons: Daniel 2: 24-30, 46-48 and Acts 17: 16-23 Sermon Title: Finding God among the Idols Preached on July 17, 2022 Last week, our family took the most wonderful vacation. We flew into Pittsburgh, rented bikes, and peddled down a 150-mile trail built on an old railroad bed to Cumberland, Maryland. As you can imagine, you must be crazy to try something like that. It is a little crazy, and the other thing you have to be to make this trip is a person who knows how to change a bike tire. Our daughter Cece had four flat tires, so many that I called for help, thinking there was something wrong with the wheel. We stopped at a bike shop in a small town where we were having lunch, and while it was closed, there was a phone number on the door. A man named Ed answered. He said he would love to help but was three hours away. Deciding that was too long to wait, he said, “Why don’t you just ask someone on the trail? Bike people are about the most wonderful people on earth.” Now why would that be? Why would “bike” people be the most wonderful people? Or why would it be that in our world today, that up in Pennsylvania, far from home, I could just ask someone on a bike, as we were, for help? I think I have the answer, and I wonder if you’ll agree that when you start with what you have in common, you stand the chance of building up a friendship. A friend of mine who is in recovery once said that he has met some of his closest friends through Alcoholics Anonymous, for when a relationship starts with one saying, “I have that problem, too; we have that in common” you’re off to a good start. So on the bike trail, we could ask other people for help because we had bikes in common. As Paul tried to bring the Gospel to the people of Athens, where would he start? Something that I love about the book of Acts are the details it contains. “While Paul was waiting in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue and also in the marketplace.” How did that go for him? Well, some said, “What does this pretentious babbler want to say?” That’s an interesting way for the Bible to describe one of the most important people in the history of Christianity; yet, that’s how some people in the world see us. There are many who think of the Church that way, for some know more about our infighting and our judgementalism than the grace of God we claim to celebrate. For example, on the cover of our local paper has been the church conflict between Mt. Bethel and the United Methodist Church. On the national news have been Christians demonstrating. Many Christians would say that such demonstrations are necessary, for just as Paul was deeply distressed with the state of the city of Athens, so the Church is distressed with the state of our nation. Maybe you feel that way sometimes. I do. Today, about 50% of the citizens of Cobb County have no religious affiliation. That’s not counting the Christmas/Easter-only crowd. That 50% has no religious affiliation at all. That hasn’t always been true. Some here might remember a time when it felt like everyone went to church, yet today the number of those who have no religious affiliation is high, and year after year, it’s growing. You might ask yourself: Are we now the city of Athens? If Paul were here, what would he think? I imagine he might feel as many of us do: deeply distressed. Do you ever feel that way? In this fallen world of war, hunger, division, and greed, where celebrities garner more attention than saints, do you ever want to just shout out? Hold up a poster? Or argue with someone? Some people do just that. Churches even argue among themselves to the extent that I once had the occasion to speak before a crowd back in Columbia, Tennessee on the subject of, “What would it take for all the churches in our community to work together?” A pastor from another denomination and I were asked to address this topic, and we had an easier time identifying those issues that divided us than those we agreed upon. That’s a shame, but it’s true. It’s also frustrating, discouraging, and distressing. We want to do something about it, but what? Sometimes, when I face the nature of our culture outside these doors, I feel resignation. I just want to give up. Other times, I’m ready to argue. That’s how Paul started out in Athens. Paul argued with the Jews and devout persons in the synagogue. That obviously got him nowhere, for some just said, “What does this pretentious babbler want to say?” Then, they took him to the Areopagus and said, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?” What will he do next? This is what he said: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” That’s a different way to respond to distress, and it’s an important change from how he approached this city full of idols to begin with. While he started out arguing in the synagogues and in the marketplace, when he went to the Areopagus, he pointed to the common ground, saying, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way, for you even have an alter dedicated to ‘an unknown god.’ Let me tell you about Him.” Starting there, on the common ground, changes things. We find that when he started there, some people started to listen. Likewise, on that bike trail when we needed help, we found it among those with whom we had something in common. Out in the world, I believe it can work the same way because yesterday, a close friend of mine who’s among those who don’t go to church shared our worship service with two or three of her friends because she liked what I said about caring for people who are nearing the end of their lives. “You see, even the atheists are helping you spread the Gospel,” she said to me. How does that happen? It started with a relationship built over what all we have in common, and what we have in common is a desire to feed hungry people, a need to make a difference, and a heart to serve the world. Isn’t starting there with what we have in common a nice place to start? If Paul could use an idol in Athens, what could you find out in the world that might help to bridge some of the divides of our society? Do this for me: Write down the name of a person you’ve been arguing with. Write her name down. If she’s sitting next to you, write it down so she can’t see it. Then write three things you have in common. If Paul could find something in Athens, an alter dedicated to an unknown god, you can find something in him or her that you resonate with. Write it down. What do you have in common? How can you use what you have in common to build a bridge? Do you argue with your mother-in-law? Fine. Write her name down. Do you love her blackberry jelly? Then ask her to teach you how to make it and see how your relationship changes. What about your neighbor? Does his dog bark all the time? Fine. Write his name down. Do you love his flowers? Write him a note and tell him about it. Don’t mention the dog. Does your husband love the Braves? Could you watch a game with him? Do you feel like your kids don’t like any of the same stuff that you do? Find out what they like and go do that with them. So often, we pay so much attention to what divides us that we forget to look for what we have in common. Worse is the story the news tells us. My friend Ralph Farrar told me the other day that sometimes the news gets him down. There’s so much crime and violence in the world, so much division, that sometimes it makes him discouraged. When that happens, he remembers that there are more Christians in the world than there are criminals. That’s true. There are also more people in this world who are looking for faith, hope, and love than any of us could ever realize. In our first Scripture lesson, Daniel went to the pagan king of a pagan nation. There, he didn’t picket, argue, or lecture. Instead, he interpreted his dreams. Whom do you argue with? Ask her about her dreams. Help her see the love of God by starting a relationship, not based on what you disagree on, but by looking into her world and finding what you have in common. In Athens, there were all those idols but just one dedicated to an unknown god. Paul started there. From that glimmer of hope, over the years, Greece went from a city of idols to the center of the Greek Orthodox Church. Later he’ll go to Rome, the center of an empire built on emperor worship, idolatry, and gladiators battling to the death. Piece by piece, the empire was transformed to become the Holy Roman Empire, and Rome is still the center of the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t think for a minute that things can’t change. They can. They have. They will. It’s just a question of where to start. Start on the common ground. Amen.