A Basket of Summer Fruit

Scripture Lessons: Colossians 1: 15-28 and Amos 8: 1-12 Sermon Title: A Basket of Summer Fruit Preached on July 21, 2019 A basket of summer fruit. That is the focus of our Second Scripture Lesson from the book of Amos. This image, on the surface, sounds nice. Summer fruit seems nice, but then what is lurking beneath the surface. It’s that way with many things about summer. Summer is nice, but then there’s the heat that comes with it. Summer vacations are nice, but then you have to come home. Have you ever come home from vacation and everyone who was so happy while you were at the beach is now grouchy and exhausted? You pull into the driveway and the grass is two feet tall. Coming back from vacation can be a little sobering. You’re greeted by a pile of yellowed newspapers. Bills are spewing out of the mailbox. You have to pick up the dogs from the kennel, and they have fleas. You’re afraid to open the milk in the refrigerator. The saddest part for me is going out to the garden. We’ve probably spent $200 on garden stuff, like fertilizer, plants, and seeds. We spent hours pulling weeds and terracing this hill so we can plant tomatoes and cucumbers, but when I go out there after we’ve been away the cucumbers are too long and the tomatoes have rotted on the vine. When you add up the cost and the labor, $200 is a big price tag for two rotten tomatoes, but what’s done is done. When you come back from vacation you have to deal with whatever you forgot to do. It’s the time for reaping whatever you’ve sown. You can’t do it over. What’s done is done. In our Second Scripture Lesson, God showed the Prophet Amos “a basket of summer fruit.” This is the second of the Prophet Amos’ metaphors that we’re encountering this summer. It’s a common enough image. Surely you have a place in the kitchen where you keep fresh fruit, but what does this metaphor mean and what does it have to do with our lives? It means that if the summer fruit is in a basket, then the time of planting is over. That time of new beginnings has come and gone. The time of fertilizing is over too. The time of pruning has passed as well. All that’s left is for the fruit to get picked. Even if the summer fruit is a bushel of bad apples, you can’t go back and do anything to change it. Amos is saying that now is the time for the people of Israel to reap what they’ve sown. As we’ve read the rest of the passage, we know that’s not a good thing. Sometimes it’s not, but that doesn’t change the fact that for them it’s too late to do anything different. It’s good to live life knowing that there is a “too late” for somethings. Hopefully living with the knowledge of “too late” in our minds forces us to do the things that must be done while we have the chance to do them. I once heard a folktale about a wild teenager who went into a forbidden forest, too disobedient to listen to everyone who warned him not to go. He was pulling down branches of ancient trees and upsetting the woodland spirits, who then, magically turned him back into a baby. The baby was returned to his mother, with the stern warning, “raise him right this time.” That’s not how it works, typically. Normally, once the summer fruit has made it to the basket, that’s it. Once the car has pulled into the driveway, back from vacation, there’s no point in regretting not having asked the kid up the street to cut the grass. All the neighbors are already talking about you, so live with it. The kids go off to college, and then for some things it’s just too late. My father-in-law told me a story about an Italian mail-carrier. He was lazy and would often put un-delivered mail in his attic. For years, maybe he intended to deliver it, I don’t know, but then one day the ceiled collapsed and fell on him in his sleep. It was too late to do anything about the undelivered mail at that point. The fruit was in the basket. For Israel it was too late too, but we can learn something from Amos, because it’s not too late for us. We can learn something from anyone who has reached this moment of finality, because we can change what we’re doing now based on what Amos wishes, especially the ruling class of Israel, done differently. You’ve heard the old anecdote, that no one lays on their death bead, wishing they had spent more time in the office. I imagine that’s true. If you remember the movie about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, then you know that as Oscar Schindler leaves this huge group of Jews, 1,100 men and women whom he saved from the Concentration Camps, he looks at his car and the gold pin on his lapel and regrets that he never sold them. That he had the chance to sell these things and could have used the money to save one more life and didn’t. It’s a moment where he can’t do any more. The time for changing anything has passed. The opportunity to do more has come and gone and he knows in this moment, as any decent person would and as the Talmud proclaims: to save one life is to save the whole world. On the other hand, what had the wealthy in Israel saved? The book of Amos describes a world where those who had power did the opposite of Schindler. Not selling their goods to save people, but “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” What is life, but our chance to make a difference and to make this world a better place? Yet in Amos we hear of those who cannot wait for the Sabbath to be over that they might reopen their stores and get back to cheating their customers, as though the point of life were making money. What is it about our society, that we have created so many people who believe that those who die with the most toys win, as though what we have in our bank accounts would somehow make us into bigger and better people? We too must heed this warning: when we reach the end of our days, when we, like summer fruit are picked from the vine, our regret will be not having shown more kindness and generosity while we had the chance. Ours is a world of investments, property acquisitions, mansions, and yachts. Last September, Business Insider, reported that the world’s largest private yacht, which cost more than $600 million to build, and has held the record for being the largest for more than five years, at 590 feet long, has been dethroned by an even bigger yacht. What would you do with a boat that big? Fish? Water ski? The new biggest yacht in the world was built by a Norwegian billionaire who ordered the construction of this new yacht to be 597 feet long, just seven feet longer than the current record holder. Why 597 feet and not just 590 feet? Because so many of us think that means something. So many of us join in the great rat race to have the nicest things. In the hope that wealth will provide happiness and fulfillment, we pursue it relentlessly. Some cut the salaries of coworkers to increase the bottom line, others wager physical health with endless hours, then compromise the wellbeing of their families by providing for their physical needs while disregarding their emotional needs. Only, here’s the problem. It doesn’t work. Money can’t buy happiness. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. It’s true. Think about it like this. Do you remember what happened to Mr. Banks in Merry Poppins? Little Michael Banks wanted to use his tuppence to buy crumbs from the bird lady. “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag.” You remember. Mr. Banks wanted him to invest that money instead. So did Mr. Daws Sr., who, played by Dick Van Dyke sang: If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank Safe and sound Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank Will compound And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest As your affluence expands In the hands of the directors Who invest as propriety demands Little Michael can’t decide what to do. He knows what Mr. Daws Sr. wants him to do. He also knows what his father wants him to do, only he naturally seems to know that what will bring him the most joy in this moment is feeding the birds. Watching this movie, we also know that Michael is right, for what does Mr. Banks know about happiness? What does he know about life? He’s the most foolish man, bumbling through his days, blind to everyone around him. Merry Poppins says he can’t see beyond his nose. Interestingly, he only finds joy once he’s been fired from the bank and spends an afternoon flying a kite with his family. Why? Because we choose the pursuit of wealth, but like King Midas, whose touch turns everything to gold, like Ebenezer Scrooge, who sleeps alone in a drafty old house, like those siblings that you know, who tore each other apart at the reading of the will, we have yet to learn that kindness, generosity, and love bring us what an excess of money never will. The tragedy of our Second Scripture Lesson isn’t just that the poor went hungry and the impoverished never pulled themselves out because of an economic system that privileged the rich, it’s that those who were rich died with regrets. They died having chosen money over people. Wealth over love. Greed over generosity. And when people who make such choices have a moment to reflect on the way they’ve lived and the choices that they’ve made, I’ve never heard of one who said, “I sure am glad I’m dying with a lot of money in my bank accounts.” No. Like fruit picked from the vine, when we go to meet our maker, it will be those who gave of themselves who leave this earth having known joy, and who go knowing that their joy will not end. Today is my birthday. Birthdays are always sobering. It’s a moment to realize that whatever I intended to do over the last year will not be done. Another year of my life is gone. Of course, I may have many more. Harry Vaughn also had a birthday this week. He turned 90, and now he is on his way to 100. When will we be picked from the vine, harvested at the end of our days? We don’t know and we can’t tell, but this passage from Amos warns us again to remember that it is coming. Like a thief in the night it comes, and when it does there is no do-over, no second chance. There will be no five-minute warning that we might quickly give away all that we’ve saved or make right what we’ve done wrong. There is no re-set button on life. And why not change now? Why postpone the joy that comes from living out our greatest purpose? We were created by the God who showed us how to live. He, who poured himself out in life, invites us to follow his example, that our joy would be complete. Amen.

Amos, What Do You See?

Scripture Lessons: Colossians 1: 1-14 and Amos 7: 7-17 Sermon Title: Amos, What Do You See? Preached on July 14, 2019 Scripture is full of wonderful metaphors. When God speaks through Scripture, we hear the divine speak in terms that we can understand, which is gracious in and of itself. God, who could so easily speak over our heads, is unlike those who use 50 cent words to make themselves sound intelligent, and instead, speaks to us of heavenly things using what we know about already. You can think of Jesus saying that God’s love for us, who are sinful and disobedient, is like that of a Father who welcomes his prodigal son back home or a woman who loses her fortune and then finds it again. Rather than using words like “predestination” or “limited atonement,” Jesus just says: faith is like a mustard seed. Then Paul says that the world is like a woman in labor, we suffer because new life is coming. Likewise, in our Second Scripture Lesson, God, through the prophet Amos, uses something that we know: a plumb line, to explain something that we don’t know or don’t fully understand, the importance of righteous judgement. Judgement is hard to understand, mostly because we don’t like it. No one likes the sound of judgement. Certainly, I don’t, but to explain God’s righteous judgement using the metaphor of a plumb line makes it a little bit better, because this metaphor helps us to see that life lived outside certain standards of behavior is like living in a house with a crooked wall. Sooner or later, it’s going to fall down, and what will hurt worse than fixing the wall is it falling down on us. That’s what a plumb line is for. A plumb line is basically just a weight with a string tied to it. When the weight is suspended it can show you a straight line up and down. I know you use it as a reference, though I’ve never actually used one. You can tell I haven’t by looking at anything that I’ve ever built, but I frequently used something like it in Mexico. Our church still goes to Mexico for mission trips. When I was in High School, we drove to either Monterey or Juarez in the old bus we called Woody (may he rest in peace) and there we’d stack cinderblocks to build houses. Due to our inexperience with stacking cinderblocks, brick lines were used to make sure that we stacked those blocks in straight lines to build a sturdy house for a family to live in. A Brick line is something like a plumb line. One hooks a wooden block on two corners, the string that stretches between provides a straight horizontal line to stack the cinderblocks according to. A plumb line does the same thing, it just gives you a straight vertical line. The brick line was the most important tool of the person we called, a “house builder.” That person was like the guy who holds the clipboard on a road maintenance crew. I loved these trips to Mexico so much that even after I was a high school student, I kept going back as a college student and was then promoted to this role of “house builder”. This was a big title, and my primary role was checking on all the brick lines. However, I wasn’t very good at it. In fact, the group of High School students stacking blocks got ahead of me. They had the whole back wall of our house stacked before I had had a chance to check their lines. This wall was bowed out so far, I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to just look the other way. My friend Dave Elliot was the other house builder, and if I took the wall down, he’d be way ahead of me. I didn’t want that, so I just kept going with one unstable wall to this four walled house. If that sounds like a horribly immature and irresponsible decision, that’s because it was. I hope you’ve never done anything like that, but it’s hard to know what to do sometimes when things are out of whack. It’s hard to know how to fix some things. There are times in life when we live in denial of problems that we’re afraid of dealing with. God doesn’t like it when we do that. Why? Because God cares as much about the family who’s going to live in the house as he does about the group whose building it and the college kid who’s overseeing it. Fortunately, God knows that sometimes we get caught up in the maintenance of our own ego and fail to face the truth of who we are and what we’re doing, and so, God sends righteous prophets, like Amos, to warn us of the results of our bad behavior. Our Second Scripture Lesson began this way: The Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; The high places shall be made desolate, And the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, And I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” The walls of the house of Israel are crooked, and God is going to tear them down to build them up again. That’s a terrifying idea, but what’s more terrifying to God is allowing his people to live in a house with crooked walls any longer. Can you imagine what it would have been like for this family to move into the house that I was building them in Mexico? Three straight walls, one crooked. I might have said something like, “Three out of four ain’t bad.” To which the mother would have said, “I’m not sleeping in this house. I’m not letting our children sleep in this house.” Fortunately for the family who lived in that house, and fortunately for the reputation of our church in Mexico, the guy who was supervising me came by to check the walls and made us take that wall all the way down to build it back up again. Dave Elliot’s house ended up being finished way ahead of mine, but it feels better to do the job right. Doesn’t it? It feels better to live a righteous life, according to God’s standards of justice. It’s best to live in a society where the poor and the voiceless are provided for. It’s best to live constructing walls for the wellbeing of all God’s children. What the book of Amos reminds us of is that God cares about all His other children as much as he cares about us, so God sends prophets who call us to tear down the crooked walls that we build which abuse the poor and the widow. And should we fail to listen, God tears them down himself. That’s sad in a way, but necessary, because sometimes we don’t listen. And sometimes we don’t listen because Amos isn’t the only one speaking. After Amos declared that the Lord is “setting a plumb line in the midst” of Israel, Amaziah, the priest said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away…never again prophesy [here].” Why? Why would Amaziah say this? Because some people can’t handle the truth and don’t want anyone else to have to handle it either. Amos speaks an inconvenient truth. But the truth is inconvenient to some people. It always is! Some people benefit from crooked walls and are afraid of how it will look if one has to be torn down on their watch. Our society is not very forgiving of people who make mistakes, so rather than apologize we deny. Rather than start over, we cover up. The King of Israel is probably thinking about how he’ll be portrayed by his biographers and if he’s keeping up with the King of Aram, so as both Amos the Prophet and Amaziah the Priest are attempting to influence the King of Israel, Jeroboam, the king, must decide who he’ll listen to. That’s how it often is. The King is a lot like all of us. He’s glad to sweep things under the rug, which is wrong. However, under the right kind of pressure he’d stop. With enough grace and encouragement, he would change and would act right. Unfortunately, though, Amaziah is there silencing Amos the Prophet and justifying the King’s bad behavior. I wonder if you have a friend who’s like Amaziah. Whenever you call, she’s on your side. After talking with her you don’t feel so bad or so alone. I have friends like that. I have friends whom I call whenever I want to complain about anything, and no matter what it is, they’re ready to commiserate and slander whoever has been trying to correct my bad behavior. Then, once I’m ready to hear the truth I go talk to my wife Sara. We need people who love us enough to tell us the truth. If we’re lucky, then we’re lucky enough to have friends who love us and support us. So, I hope you have a friend, who loves you so much that most of the time she just listens, but who some of the time, loves you so much she can’t help but tell you when you’re being irresponsible and immature; that your crooked walls of behavior are about to collapse on top of the people you love. That’s why I don’t like it when the President talks about “fake news.” I know the press is hard on him, and I know they don’t get it right all the time, but I also know that while evil can be at work in those who stand in our way, sometimes the evil we must fear the most is the one who cheers us on while we’re running in the wrong direction. We can’t just silence the prophets. Crooked walls have to come down and there are times in our lives when God sends people who say hard things because He loves us enough to tell us the truth. And if we just brush off the prophets, the crooked walls will stay, then fall, when we could have fixed them. God holds a plumb line, that the crooked walls of society be rebuilt before they teeter and collapse on the desperate and the disenfranchised. God holds the plumb line up to our own behavior, because God cares for those who suffer under the crooked walls that we build. You see, God isn’t the housing inspector who walks around searching for code violations just to wield power. That’s not what God’s righteous judgement is. For our God is about rescuing us all from darkness. Even the darkness of our own making. And what is God’s will? That you and I and all God’s children have a house of four straight walls to live in. Amos’ great vision was that “justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” May it be so. Amen.

Wash and Be Clean

Scripture Lessons: Galatians 6: 7-16 and 2 Kings 5: 1-14 Sermon title: “Wash and be clean” Preached on July 7, 2019 This Second Scripture Lesson is focused on a great and infamous man named Naaman who was healed by the power of God, but what nearly prevented him from being healed is what I’m most interested in this morning. There are things that get in the way of healing, especially when it comes to those who care a lot about what people think of them. You’ve heard of Wilt Chamberlain. According to some he was the greatest basketball player of all time having once scored 100 points by himself in a single game. That’s the most anyone has ever scored in a professional basketball game. It’s probably the most anyone will ever score in a professional basketball game, but what’s so interesting about this game that took place in Hershey, Pennsylvania in 1962, is that when he scored over 100 point by himself in this single game, Wilt Chamberlain made nearly all of his foul shots. Now why did he make nearly all of his foul shots in this game when he typically made less than half of them? It’s because for this season and only this season, Wilt Chamberlain shot his foul shots underhanded, using a technique I grew up calling “the granny shot.” From the foul line that night in Hersey, Pennsylvania Chamberlain made 28 out of 30 of his foul shots granny style when he normally made 12 or 13 out of 30 shooting them with his hands over his head. Now if Wilt Chamberlain, all 7 feet, 275 pounds of Wilt Chamberlain, could dramatically increase his ability to make foul shots by using the granny shot, why would he ever shoot foul shots any other way? According to Chamberlain himself, it was because he thought shooting underhanded made him look like ridiculous. In fact, in his autobiography Chamberlain wrote, “I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong. I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way... I just couldn't do it.” Generally speaking, one might say that there are two kinds of people in this world. The kind of person who can understand why Wilt Chamberlain went back to shooting foul shots the way that he did and the other kind of person who thinks he’s crazy to have cared so much about what other people thought. Which kind of person was Naaman? Right there at the beginning of our Second Scripture Lesson we read: “Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.” You wouldn’t call a man who suffered from leprosy vain, but a man like this has to spend a fair amount of time thinking about how he is perceived. A commander or a general must spend time thinking about how he is seen in the eyes of his troops. That was true of George Washington. Just after the 4th of July it’s good to be thinking of him, but let it be known that as a general he executed his own soldiers if they deserted their post. Why? Because no one who gives orders can risk appearing weak. That’s true of both generals and parents, so if I make the declaration that everyone must eat five bites of soup before they leave the table, no one can leave until they’ve done it. Why? Because once the children see weakness, they’ll take advantage of it. Imagine then, how it felt to Naaman, commander of the army of Aram, that when he came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of the Prophet Elisha’s house, and Elisha sent out a messenger. I expect that Naaman rode up with a proper procession of troops on horse-back and troops in chariots. Maybe it was something like the ancient world’s equivalent to the parade through Washington DC last Thursday with tanks on display and fly-overs. Only in this case, after the pomp and circumstance, the great commander, the giver of orders, a severe man who demanded respect and couldn’t stand to look silly in front of his troops, is left waiting outside the house of a prophet he’s never met because Elisha won’t even pay him the honor of a proper greeting. All the way there, as they rode on their chariots, surely people were shaking in their boots. Children were climbing into their mother’s arms and rushing inside, the King of Israel tore his clothes and cried out in a panic. However, then they stop at the house of the Prophet Elisha, the dust settles, the commander dismounts, and Elisha didn’t even come out to see about the commotion. Then, Elisha sent a messenger to him, with directions so simple the foreign commander surely wondered why he had traveled so far: “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” The commander of an army just can’t be disrespected that way. After seeing how the Prophet didn’t even come out to see him, Naaman’s power and authority were in question. So, understandably, “Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” I guess not, because sometimes the cure requires surrender. It could be that the cure even requires humiliation. Sometimes the cure requires that you and I address our vanity and stop worrying so much about what everyone else thinks to do finally what must be done. Now a statement like that assumes that people suffer from a level of vanity. I’m not trying to call anyone in particular vain this morning. I’m trying to call everyone vain this morning myself especially. Vanity is a problem because sometimes it’s vanity that keeps basketball players from being better basketball players, commanders of armies from being cured from their leprosy, sick people from getting better, aging people from aging gracefully, and sinners from being set free. Sometimes our Achilles heel is just so preventable. Sometimes we could all too easily do something about what ails us, but don’t. Why? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once declared that “our thinking is often anthropocentric rather than theocentric.” What he means is that “the question which is usually asked is, “What will my neighbor think…” or “what will my friends think...” Somehow [we] forget to ask the question, “What will God think.” And so [we] live in fear because [we] are bogged down on the horizontal plane with only a modicum of devotion to the vertical.” What does God require of Naaman the General, but to wash and be clean. And what kept him from it? Pride, vanity, and the maintenance of his own reputation. If the great preacher William Sloane Coffin was right in saying that “faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation” than it might be safe to conclude that Naaman’s struggle to get into the water of the Jordan River isn’t like the leap of faith where you walk on water. It’s not so radical or dramatic as that. It’s maybe more like the struggle of every boy who’s been invited onto the dance floor by a young girl but is afraid because he thinks he can’t dance. Should he bow to vanity? Should he listen to the jeers of his friends? Should Naaman risk forsaking the respect of his troops? Thinking this way, it’s easy to see that the maintenance of reputation can be a problem, for while we all long for approval, some long for the approval even of those who hold them back from doing what is best. In the same way, the soul of our nation is threatened by an evil that we are afraid to really talk about, for fear of how we’ll be perceived. On the boarder there are children separated from their parents, a father drowned with his child on his back, but in the age of partisan politics we must be careful about what we say about it or risk being called a liberal. A man was nearly sent to prison for giving an illegal immigrant water as he crossed the desert, but it was hard for many to pardon him for fear of appearing soft on the immigration issue. I don’t know how to tell you to think or how to tell you to vote, but as a preacher I can say that if we don’t spend less time worried about how our neighbors and our friends perceive us and more attention to how we are being judged by God we risk winning an election while continuing to suffer with spiritual leprosy. That’s how it was with Naaman. That’s how it often is with us. Last Monday I read the front page of the Marietta Daily Journal. (You know, it’s been so many weeks that I’ve quoted the Marietta Daily Journal they ought to give me a free subscription or something.) Last Monday on the front page were the top causes of preventable death in Cobb County. Here in Cobb County the top cause of preventable death is heart disease, which might be managed with medication and diet. The second is suicide. Suicide is preventable. However, it demands we get the help that we need, and that’s where it gets tricky. Going to a counselor isn’t bad at all, but parking in the lot where someone might see us, that’s where the struggle is. We must take a lesson from Naaman. To see that only a fool stands in the way of his own healing out of concern for how he’s being perceived. In our First Scripture Lesson, the Apostle Paul wrote with his own hand: “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world [with all its pride, expectations, rumors, vanity, and shame] has been crucified to me, and I to the world [for what they say and what they think], it’s all nothing. But a new creation, that is everything.” May it be so with you. May it be so with me. Amen.

Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?

Scripture Lessons: 1 Kings 19: 15-21 and 2 Kings 2: 1-14 Sermon Title: Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah? Preached on June 30, 2019 About two years ago, we moved here from Columbia, Tennessee, which is a considerable town. It has its own mall and its own newspaper, but Marietta often makes Columbia look tiny in comparison. For example, in the Columbia paper, The Daily Herald, I remember that coverage of a hay-bail fire once made the front page. When I read our paper, go to a Braves game, or when we’re out driving around and sitting in traffic, I feel like now we’re living in a big city. That’s until something like a power outage happens. Last Monday evening in our neighborhood, all kinds of people went out in the rain to watch the crew clear the power lines. You better believe we were there. We weren’t missing something like that. Not only was there nothing else to do, but it was good, small town entertainment. Plus, while we were standing there, our coonhound, Junebug made friends with a Labrador retriever. I started talking to this guy standing with his girlfriend. Something about him made him look like he knew what was going on, so Sara asked him if he knew how long it would be before we got power back. By day, this guy was probably an accountant, but in that moment, he rose to the occasion. He looked up and down the power line at the guys working in bucket trucks to see their progress and said, “probably not too much longer.” Some people like to look like they know what they’re talking about. Some people like to appear to be in charge, and a little later this guy stopped one of the linemen and asked him some question about the transformer. The look on the real expert’s face was the same as how I imagine Jimmy Carter looked watching last weeks’ democratic presidential debates. Sometimes, compared to real experts, the amateur looks a little ridiculous. We worry then, about the future, based on who we’re leaving it to. That’s a common enough theme in the worlds of literature, movies, as well as Scripture. It’s there, even in Toy Story 4. Have you seen it? I went to see Toy Story 4 week before last. I didn’t go by myself. Our daughter went with me, but I got a lot out of the movie. It starts off with Woody, a toy ragdoll who is also a Sheriff, dusty and dejected in a closet. He’s a toy come to life, and part of all four of these Toy Story movies is telling how toys live out their purpose by comforting children through life transitions like their first day of school. That’s a simple and wholesome theme in the movies, though it’s not so entertaining, so the drama in all these Toy Story movies comes from Woody the rag doll who has to deal with being replaced by new toys that his owner enjoys playing with more than him. In the first one it’s a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear, and by Toy Story 4, Woody and Buzz the Spaceman have been passed on to a new kid because their first kid grew up and went to college. Their new owner is a little girl who takes off Woody’s Sheriff badge, throws him the closet, and puts the badge on a ragdoll cowgirl named Jessie whom she plays with on her bedroom floor. Well, as soon as the little girl leaves the room what does Woody do? He comes alive, bursts out of the closet, and takes his badge back because Jessie the cowgirl can’t handle the responsibility that comes with such a title as Sheriff. To experts like Woody, amateurs are a nuisance. You can imagine these kinds of feelings coming from Elijah, who’s been a prophet in Israel for years. He’s been dealing with kings and famines, doing miracles, and speaking the truth. What does he need with some young guy following him around? It’s clear from what Elijah said to him in verse 20 of our First Scripture Lesson, “Go back again; for what have I done to you?” that signing on as Elijah’s understudy didn’t come with a hearty handshake and a corner office. Elijah doesn’t want him around and only anoints Elisha as “prophet” because God told him he had to. Now, why is he like that? Maybe you can imagine. It’s hard to pass some things on, especially if you feel like the new guy is replacing you. So, Woody took back his sheriff badge from Jessie and even while Elijah is marching off to be taken up into heaven, he’s still reluctant to entrust anything important to Elisha. He kept saying, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.” Then, “Stay here, for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” Elijah just keeps going and Elisha keeps tagging along. Meanwhile, the fate of Israel’s prophetic voice hangs in the balance. This is a precarious place for a society to be. The expert is fading away and doesn’t want to. The amateur might not be ready. Ego and fear get in the way and the reader must wonder, “where is the God of Elijah?” That’s a place many find themselves. Maybe that’s a place we all find ourselves. Sometimes we debate whether or not we are still living in a Christian Country. Many things are changing. A generation steps back as a new generation steps forward, only this new generation isn’t always watching where they’re going for staring at their cell phones. Where are we going and what’s going to happen next? “Where is the God of Elijah?” Well, however you’re feeling about the state of things here in our nation, our Judeo-Christian roots are still very clear when you consider this Second Scripture Lesson. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “passing the mantel” of leadership. That comes from this Second Scripture Lesson as Elijah passes his “mantel” or robe to Elisha. This passage is also where we got that great Spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” for Elijah is swept up into heaven on a Chariot of Fire, leaving him with no other option other than passing his mantel on to the next generation amateur Elisha. That he leaves so dramatically, and that he’s completely gone is helpful in a way, for until the expert leaves, the amateur hardly knows what to do. Maybe you remember that moment in Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus, returns from his travels to a home used to getting a long without him. His son, Telemachus, has sort of become the man of the house. He’s not used to running things by his father. When he goes out at night, he doesn’t want anyone asking him to be home by 11:00. But when Odysseus returns the son goes to string his father’s bow, and he can’t do it. Or he says he can’t any way. I remember my English professor telling us that there had been books written on this one brief moment. At that time in my life I couldn’t imagine why. That was because we studied the Odyssey before I ever tried to buy my dad dinner or had to help my grandfather find his way through the hallways of a hospital where he kept getting lost. Whenever the mantel is passed the one who receives it must be mindful of the dignity of the one who is giving it. That’s important to consider, because many of our heroes fade away slowly from positions of influence and power, expertise and authority, taken up into heaven piece by piece rather than all at once in a Chariot of Fire. I remember so well a story folks used to tell about a man who had stayed too long as a member of the board at the local bank. Preparing for one meeting no one wanted him at, he was all upset about the way another member of the board had handled some investment and was prepared to question this man (I’ll call him Bill)’s integrity in front of everyone. Bill’s daughter was the one so worried about it, not wanting her father’s reputation to be questioned in such a public way, but she told me that by the time discussion of her father’s handling of this investment came up on the agenda, the past-his-prime board member had fallen asleep. We are all moving in and out of our positions on this earth. Some are ridding off into the sunset, others are just now stepping on to the stage. There’s plenty to fear in either case, for if Woody, the Sheriff is to give up his badge he has to discover who he is without it and Jessie the cowgirl must summon the courage to live up to the high office of toy-sheriff. If Telemachus can string his father’s bow, then Odysseus must start to wonder about his place in his own home, and his son must learn to live in a world where he stands on his own rather than in his father’s shadow. If Elijah is to accept this ride into heaven on a chariot of fire, he puts his faith completely in the God who does impossible things, and if Elisha is to take up his master’s mantle he must do the same, trusting that the God of Elijah will not leave the earth as his master rides off into heaven. That’s a terrifying thing. What guarantee is there that blessing will be passed down from one generation to the next? What assurance do we have that God’s provision will continue? How can we have hope for the future when all we know of God’s presence is that He has been our help in ages past? Elisha saw Elijah take his mantle, roll it up, and strike the water. When he did the water parted so that they two of them crossed on dry ground. “Where is the God of Elijah,” the prophet Elisha asked as he struck the water of the Jordan with his master’s mantle, but the waters parted again. As the 4th of July approaches, I want to share with you a quote from Ronald Reagan: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. It’s not so different with God’s blessings, which are handed down from one generation to the next, not confined to the past but here and now. Where is the God of Elijah? He is with you and with me, and he isn’t going anywhere. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Help Along the Way

Scripture Lessons: Galatians 3: 23-29 and 1 Kings 19: 1-15a Sermon title: Help Along the Way Preached on June 23, 2019 Being around kids during the summer reminds me of how obsessed with fairness they can be. Whether here at the church or out on the playground, it seems like, “it’s not fair!” is all I ever hear. Again, and again, it’s “but she got a bigger piece,” and “I had to sit in the back seat last time.” Kids can be obsessed with justice, and so often their paying more attention to what everyone else is doing than what’s really going on around them. I heard a radio show this week all about a preschool classroom where the teacher, so tiered of her class tattling on each other, placed an old red, rotary phone in the back of the room, and without plugging it in to anything, told her students that if they needed to tell on one of their friends they could go and tell it to “the tattle phone”. It was a revolutionary success, in that the kids used it instead of constantly streaming to her. Someone had the bright idea to plug this phone in to a recorder so that the radio audience could hear what kids were saying, and this is some of what they said: Romana wasn’t listening to the teacher and Eli hit Kevin. That when Vera was playing family with Tommy, he kept trying to wake her up when she was pretending to be asleep. Also, Sally pushed Billy, and Thomas passed gas right in Eugene’s face (and he didn’t even say excuse me). The funny thing about all this, is that as far as these kids knew, when they got upset, went and told on their friends into the tattle phone, there was no one on the other end listening who could do anything about it, but this segment of the radio show ended with one child who went home and told his father that the tattle phone was broken. I’m sure his dad was thinking, “What do you mean it’s broken. It never worked.” His son said, “Dad, the tattle phone is broken. I told the phone that my friend Nicky was pinching me but after I told the tattle phone he still didn’t stop.” Now some of us have learned this lesson already. We that’s a problem. The world isn’t fair and sometimes you go tell the tattle phone and no one is listening, or you go and tell your teacher, but she says something like, “Well, life’s not fair.” That being the case, parents have to teach their children that sometimes they must stand up for themselves. Grandfathers lecture their grandchildren about personal responsibility, for sometimes we go looking for someone to help and find out that we’re that someone. So, the Prophet Elijah stood up to do something about it. He’s a great hero in the Bible. The backstory to today’s Second Scripture Lesson is that there was an evil queen named Jezebel. She was married to the King of Israel, but he was kind of a joke, so there was no one else to stand up to her idolatry and oppression, therefore Elijah stood up to her. It was a great success too. There was a legendary contest between her god, Baal, and Elijah’s God. Two altars set up. The God who rained down fire and lit his respective altar won, and Elijah did it. He triumphed, only then Queen Jezebel decided not to give up and to just have Elijah killed instead. That’s where the unfairness of the situation gets to him. The prophet Elijah runs for his life. He went a day’s journey into the wilderness, because after standing up against Queen Jezebel and all her priests, still unrighteousness and idolatry ruled Israel. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and asked that he might die saying, “It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life for I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he fell asleep. An angel of the Lord woke him and fed him that he might go 40 more days, making it all the way to Horeb, the mount of God. Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, “What are you doing here Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” None of this is very fair, and Elijah was right to tell God all about it. He was right to tattle on Jezebel and to defend his own righteousness, for among all the great villains of Scripture, she’s one of the worst. And among all heroes of our faith, Elijah is among the most faithful. However, seeing his words in print, the part of his speeches that seems funny to me, is how often he uses the pronoun “I.” “I am no better than my ancestors,” he said. “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts.” Then, while they “have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left.” Even though there comes a time when we must stand up for ourselves and can no longer spend all our time tattling to our teacher, this kind of self-centeredness will cloud our vision of reality. Once we’ve learned to stand up for ourselves, we’re not yet out of danger, for if we live into a lie that it’s all up to us, we’re exactly where the Evil One wants us, because this way of thinking and being blinds us to God and holds us far from the truth of how things actually are. Thinking again of the radio show from the preschool, the journalist who set up and listened to the tattle phone asked the preschool teacher, “about how much of their time is spent concerned with tattling.” She said, “This isn’t scientific, but I’d say most of it.” The journalist responded to this statement by saying, “It’s amazing that in a world where they can’t feed themselves, dress themselves, or take themselves anywhere, literally able to do nothing on their own, they become so obsessed with fairness.” Maybe we laugh about that irony when thinking of little kids, but I can’t help but assume that God feels the same way about us. I can’t help but imagine God feeling the same way about Elijah “I, I, I,” Elijah said to God, but it doesn’t matter whether we’re down on ourselves, defending ourselves, or trying to show the world that someone else is really the problem, so long as we are the focus, we can’t see God at work, feeding us, dressing us, and watching over us by night. So, to get Elijah’s focus away from himself, a voice calls him out to the edge of a cliff on top of a mountain. You can imagine what this was like, for maybe you know already that sometimes clarity comes when we stand on the peak to see the great wide world around us. That was the case with a friend of mine named Jim Hodges. Jim was a member of the first church I served, and he was diagnosed with lung cancer. For a while, things were OK. He just had to walk around with an oxygen pump, but then he was hospitalized and I remember well the day he called to tell me that the doctor said it wouldn’t be long. That he didn’t have much time left. We were close, so it was hard for me to see him like that. When I got to his hospital room his wife Carol excused herself and I sat down by his bed. The first thing I asked was if he was afraid. Jim paused. Then he said, “I’m afraid Carol doesn’t really understand the maintenance schedule for the HVAC contract.” After another pause, he said, “Joe, I don’t know what I’m going to do when I see him.” I wasn’t sure who him was at first, so I just listened as he continued talking. “When I see him, what will I do? Will I laugh? Will I cry? Will I sing? When I see Jesus, I’m not sure I’ll know what to do.” Now Jim was from Texas and this happened in a hospital over in Lilburn, but as far as I’m concerned, he could have been meditating on top of a mountain in Tibet for how enlightened he was. His mind wasn’t on cancer, because he could see so far beyond it. There’s no question in my mind that there is no more miserable person than the one who thinks only of himself. I believe that those who love their neighbors as themselves have unlocked the secret to happiness, and those who trust the Lord have a joy within them that no hardship can touch, for they see beyond temporary hardship to love and joy. That matters, because we’re the kind of people who will spend all our time tattling on our friends, instead of rejoicing in our blessings. I’ve caught myself complaining about writing a stack of thank-you notes rather than celebrating the gifts I’ve received. We rage at the dying of the night, forgetting the glory of our days or the promise of our future, but when we stand at the cliff, we see beyond the temporary to glimpse the eternal. Then, we are like David who defeated Goliath. Like Paul who changed the world. Like Jim, who defeated cancer, even though it took his life. Because when we focus away from ourselves, we see our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, our ever-present help in times of need. Amen.

In Defiance of Babel

Scripture Lessons: Genesis 11: 1-9 and Acts 2: 1-21 Sermon Title: In Defiance of Babel Preached on June 9, 2019 It’s amazing how relevant Scripture is. The great theologian of the 20th Century, Karl Barth, would advise his students to prepare their sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, as ancient Scripture comes alive day after day. This seemed eerily relevant advice last Monday morning as I read the Marietta Daily Journal. You may know that our current Habitat for Humanity house is a joint effort. Just yesterday, members of our church, coordinated by Tim Hammond and the Mission Council, were scheduled to join together with Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Unitarians, as well as members from Temple Kol Emeth Synagogue and two mosques to build a single mother named Belinda and her two children a new home. We’re working together with all of them, but this is the funny part. Considering all the different religious groups involved in the build, last Monday morning our paper quoted the project’s co-chair who said, “We call it our Tower of Babel.” Now that we’ve read what God did at the Tower of Babel, I’m not sure I’m glad that’s how he referred to the house. However, I get his point. We live in this world where most of the time, different people can’t do anything like this. It’s as though we’re all speaking different languages. Oftentimes, even those who speak the same language can’t understand each other. If you need proof of the massive level of misunderstanding prevalent in our culture, of course the obvious example is always Washington, DC where “the aisle” is like some deep, unbridgeable chasm. Only, there’s no need to look all the way to Washington for a failure to communicate. Spouses often can’t understand each other. Neighbors don’t always know each other’s names. Then there’s always someone at the family reunion who seems to have come from a completely different planet rather than the same gene pool. The two Scripture Lessons we’ve just read tell two of the accounts where all that changes: first in Genesis, when “The whole earth had one language and the same words,” and then in Acts, when the gathered believers began “to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” Recorded then, are at least two brief instances when we all understood each other. Because such understanding is rare, it’s good to pay attention to both these passages of Scripture, but we must also pay attention to how they are also different. These two Scripture Lessons are very different in the sense that in one instance humankind uses their common tongue to work together to build a tower so that they might “make a name for [them]selves”, while in the other, it was not humankind, but God who was glorified. That’s a significant difference in motivation. The difference reminds me of a great quote: “It’s amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.” So often we care about that, trying to “make a name for ourselves,” which is a bad idea, for be it Ancient Egypt, Mussolini’s Rome, or wherever else masses of soldiers goose step in identical uniforms, when self-interest, vain glory, and pride guide the project, not only a tower, but tyranny is being created. “Let us make a name for ourselves,” they said in our First Scripture Lesson. These are dangerous words. [So] The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” I used to think that God confused the languages of those who were building the Tower of Babel because God was threatened by what humanity was able to do. However, on heels of the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, I know that what God was worried about was how whenever humans are able to build a tower, we nearly always also build a gas chamber. Every time one nation sets her mind on making a name for herself, she does so with violence and inhumanity towards other nations and ethnicities. That should someone say, “Let’s prove, once and for all, that Marietta is better than everyone else,” the football team will face recruitment violations, the mayor will be tempted to accept bribes, and the chamber of commerce will turn into a den of graft and favors, because when making a name for ourselves is the goal, winning becomes more important than righteousness, control more important than justice, order more important than grace, silence more important than hope, and survival more important than love. Last Thursday night our girls had a swim meet. I had the honor of being a line judge. My duty was to report which kid won each race. Did you know that one each side of the pool there have to be two line judges? One parent from each team, because even in a kid’s swim-team competition, if one subdivision has the chance to “make a name for [her]self” honesty and integrity are bulldozed in the pursuit of vain glory. On the other hand, something different happened at Pentecost. They weren’t speaking the same language, but they could all understand each other. Did you notice that? All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability… And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Scripture doesn’t say that each person in Jerusalem could suddenly understand one language. What Scripture says when describing Pentecost is that each could understand the voice of God speaking to them in their own language. One Bible Scholar named Diamonthi Niles translates this passage saying, “each one heard them speaking in her mother tongue.” I like that. You know why? Because Siri can’t understand my accent. Neither can Alexa. I once heard about an airport in Wisconsin, posting a “help wanted” add for telephone operators who could speak Spanish, German, Mandarin, and Southern. I hate that we live in a world where everyone is supposed to speak like a news anchor and where “ain’t’s” not a word, but on Pentecost it was different, because God’s love is different. Those who seek to make a name for themselves push us towards uniformity. Commerce wants to give every kid a mass-produced Happy Meal and will judge every woman by the same standards of beauty, but God speaks to us in the voice that we don’t have to think to understand. Industrial progress makes us cogs in a wheel to build their towers. Stations on an assembly line to build their fleets. Our jobs can demand that we do things the same way, again and again, all according to the manual rather than our creativity, but God sees us as individuals who are uniquely suited to serve His greater purpose. Scripture tells us that those who are determined to make a name for themselves, will violate and objectify us every time. Though Scripture also proclaims over and over again that God speaks to us in words of love because all our God wants is that we would be saved. As Peter explained to the crowds: In the last days it will be, God declares, That I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, And your sons and daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, In those days I will pour out my Spirit; Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. The crucial word there is at the end: “everyone.” That word “everyone” is so different from, “us.” “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” is so different from, “Let us make a name for ourselves.” For there to be an “us” there must be a “them,” but are we not all children of Abraham? Of course, “everyone” is a problematic word as well. The idea that everyone would get a trophy or that everyone is a winner feels like a culture of pampering rather than reality. On the other hand, how wonderful the world would be if everyone was happy for whoever who won the trophy. If everyone celebrated whoever was given the honor of having his name on a mighty sea vessel, tall tower, or scenic park. If everyone sought good and no one cared who got the credit, and everyone did what they believed was right without worrying so much about who benefited. When life is one long competition between “us” and them, sooner or later everyone loses. But if the Spirit moves again and we all realize once more that life is one long blessing from God to all His children, then truly, everyone will be saved. Early this morning Jim MacDonald, a great leader in our church, sent me the message Tim Hammond emailed to all of yesterday’s Habitat for Humanity volunteers. I didn’t ask Tim if I could quote him up here, because he would have said no, and this is just too important to miss: Hello friends, sisters, and brothers, I have been thinking about this day. We had to get up too early, we had to get on a bus and ride to Mableton, we had to endure incredible rain, slosh through mud, and bump into each other trying to accomplish jobs under the confines of one roof. But I want to be clear about this day. We arose early to come together as missionaries in service to our Lord Jesus Christ. We sloshed through rain and mud with smiles. Under that roof we saw each other, not as people in our way, but as those we might serve. We did our best to give Belinda a safe place to live and take care of her family, as well as worship Christ. Friends, today we cemented our family ties. To God be the glory. Amen.

Why Do You Stand Looking?

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Acts 1: 1-11 Sermon Title: Why Do You Stand Looking? Preached on June 2, 2019 My family and I spent the last week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We traveled there with Sara’s family. All of us were in one big house, which was an adventure in and of itself. There was also the challenge that fell mostly to Sara, of managing all the wants and needs of this group of people who all wanted to do different things while also wanting to stick together. One day during the trip we drove out to a pilgrimage cite. That trip made its way to the agenda because, while both their daughters married protestant ministers, Sara’s mother and father are Roman Catholic. Since we were staying so close to El Santuario De Chimayo, a shrine and pilgrimage cite that attracts about 300,000 people each year, they both wanted to go and check it out, having heard that it is like the Lourdes of the Southwest. I was excited to go too, as Presbyterians don’t often get to go to these kinds of places. All over the site were pictures of people who had been healed. Crutches left by those who didn’t need them any longer. It’s a place with a supposed miraculous soil that comes from a holy well, where a man named Don Bernardo Abeyta found a crucifix in 1810, while doing penance. According to this legend, Christ met him out there in the New Mexico desert. This is a story that many people believe, but Presbyterians tend to be skeptical of this kind of thing. However, thinking of Acts, it should come as no surprise that the Lord would be present in New Mexico, for just as Don Bernardo found a crucifix there in 1810 while doing penance, last week we celebrated the Apostle Paul who went all the way to Macedonia and joined God who was already at work there. Likewise, in Acts, Peter went to visit a Roman Centurion named Cornelius, only to find that God had prepared even the heart of one who served the Empire to hear him preach the Gospel. It’s miraculous, and I’ve had the same experience in my life of being surprised by the presence of God in faraway places. As a High School student, I thought that we were sent by this church to bring the light of Christ to Mexico. We went there to build houses just as a group from our church is doing now, only, every time we went, we discovered that God had beat us there. We have to remember that, because the disciples saw Jesus ascend into heaven, and they were stuck for a moment, still staring up at the sky. Of course, they were, for too often we become obsessed with where we saw God at work last, rather than focus our attention on where God is at work now. I believe the life of faith is something like learning to ride a bike. It must be, because in one moment, just as the disciples had Jesus there, so we knew that our father was holding the seat, but as we and the bike moved forward, even though he promised not to, a good father always let’s go. For moments everything was fine, we were riding a bike and it was as miraculous as Peter walking on the water. Then, we looked back to where our father was, and not seeing him where he was, we lost balance and fell, because life, like riding a bike, requires that we pay more attention to where we are going than where we’ve been. Christ ascended into heaven, and the disciples were transfixed, staring up at the clouds. Suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” It’s as though they were saying: He’s not up there in the clouds anymore. You have to stop looking for him there or you’ll fall. While we were out west, we visited the Cliff Dwellings at Bandoleer National Park. This was an exciting place to go and be because there we saw human residences, thousands of years old. They were ancient apartment buildings made of wood and mud. It was incredible. So incredible that Lily and Cece’s cousin Sam wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. He was looking up, and so he slipped and fell and scraped his knee and elbow. It happened on my watch, so I picked him up and brushed him off. He needed a Band-Aid, which of course, I did not have. Luckily, a woman in a blue hat stopped and pulled one out of her little purse. That made him feel better. Icing on the cake was the piece of gum that she pulled out of her purse next. When Sara caught up, this lady said to her, “He did just fine.” I said, “Thank you,” because I thought she was talking about me. She wasn’t. She was talking about Sam, and now I see this experience as one of those little miracles. So far, this woman in the blue hat has worked more wonders than the dirt I got out of the well at El Santuario De Chimayo. That’s not immediately obvious however, because so often we just brush off such acts of the Spirit off as though they were happenstance. Years ago, I was visiting a lonely woman in her home. She was going on and on about how no one from the church ever speaks to her. I was empathetic because it’s always tragic when the church fails at being the church, but it happens, so I apologized. However, then the phone rang. It was a member of the church calling to check on her. I could hear the conversation, “I’ve missed seeing you and just wanted to see how you were,” says the church member on the line. Once she hung up, thanking this woman from the church, ironically, she just launched right back into it, “no one from the church even knows me!” She failed to see Jesus right before her, focused somewhere else. Too often we are the way. Chaining our focus on where he was, we fail to see where he is. In this way, the past becomes a prison to too many, despite the fact that God is even now opening the door to freedom and new life. So rarely do we open our eyes enough to recognize, that Christ is still at work, just not always where we expect him to be. This is an important lesson for our church today, because we have not yet reached the Promised Land, though we are tempted to mistake the bygone days for it. Nor have we missed out on it, for we have yet to see the peak of what God will do among us. However, how God is moving in the present may look different from the past, and where God will lead us demands that we leave so much of our past behind. We don’t really know how God will move among us next, but we must choose looking for Him at work in new and mysterious ways over nostalgia or regret. There’s danger in both. Nostalgia doesn’t seem dangerous. Neither does looking up at the clouds, but there are Christians who are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good. There are living people so consumed with ancient history that they risk becoming dusty relics themselves. We sometimes honor the memory of the departed, over paying attention to the newborn. So regretful that we abdicate the promise of the future. So, used to hurt, that we fail to see the miracle worker even when he stands before us. We just look up at the clouds, blind to God all around us. That’s why we must hear them asking, “Men and women of Marietta, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” This God of ours incarnate in Christ Jesus is alive and well, leading us into a new future. I know it’s coming too. Because as I was working on this sermon, we were way up in the clouds, flying back home from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I didn’t see him there, but I remembered where he promised he would be: 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. [for truly the king of heaven said,] just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. Let us look into the future knowing that he’s leading us onward. And let us go out into the world today expecting for him to meet us there. Amen.