Let Mutual Love Continue

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 2: 4-13 and Hebrews 13: 1-8 Sermon Title: Let mutual love continue Preached on September 1, 2019 This Scripture Lesson that I’ve just read is a good reminder of what we, as Christians, ought to be all about. And the Scripture Lesson that Linley just read is a good reminder that we, as Christians, have a tendency to stray away from what we ought to be all about. Of course, we’re not alone in straying. We all stray. Consider Kentucky Fried Chicken. Consider just the name: Kentucky Fried Chicken, and yet last week they started serving something called “beyond fried chicken.” Now I don’t know what “beyond fried chicken” is exactly, but while it’s fried it’s not chicken, and you can just about be certain that it didn’t come from Kentucky. What’s next, right? But this kind of thing happens a lot. We come loose from our roots. We go off the rails. We stray from the very essence of who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing. And while considering expanding American waist-lines, it could be that un-chicken is where we should be going, however, most of the time, straying too far from the point is bad. So, from time to time we have to be reminded of the point. That’s why various human institutions ritualize the simple and crucial act of stating who they are and what they’re all about so as not to forget the main thing. Our youngest daughter Cece took taekwondo lessons for a while. She loved it, and in addition to seeing her master various punches and kicks, I loved that every lesson ended the same way. The Senior Student, the one who has achieved the most advanced rank in the group, would lead the class in reciting the six tenants of taekwondo, the six defining attributes that every student of taekwondo should embody in their daily life: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit, and victory. At the end of the class all the kids lined up, and our Cece was in the back standing there in her resting stance, and the senior student faced the rest of the class and yelled out: “courtesy,” and all the kids repeated, “courtesy.” Then “integrity” she says, and all the other kids say, “integrity.” Then “perseverance” – “perseverance.” “Self-control” – “self-control” “Indomitable spirit” – and the little ones in the back would say “indom -mmm - ble spirit.” It was great. It was all just great, because what could be better than closing the lesson with the core, the essence, the epitome of what every taekwondo student should be and should be doing? The Cub Scouts do the same: “I promise, to do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, to help other people, and to obey the law of the pack.” The Boy Scouts of course begin their meetings with the Scout Oath and Law, and I’ll bet everyone here who’s been involved in scouts could stand and say it. This is why the school day starts with the Pledge to the Flag and the baseball game with the National Anthem. We use these rituals to summarize; to clarify. It’s by these kinds of statements that we hope to make our expectations clear and stay on the right path. And that’s important, because every group strays. Every group forgets. It’s easy to get distracted from the main thing. Cece signed up for taekwondo and the first thing I wanted to know is when she was going to karate chop a board in half, but that’s not why they’re there. It’s about integrity, perseverance, self-control, and the indom – mmm - ble spirit. In the same way, Boy Scouts isn’t about merit badges and getting into a good college once you have your eagle. Being a doctor is about first, “do no harm,” life as a lawyer is centered around defending the Constitution and living by a code of fidelity and truth, only how many are like those preachers who stray from such ideals to make a little more money. How do you keep a group rooted in its true purpose? You make the true purpose plain and clear again and again: “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” That’s Scouts. But what about Christians? You go out into the world and ask around a little bit and you may hear the opposite of what we intend. You may hear that “A Christian is judgmental, closed minded, self-righteous, fearful, so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly good.” Like every group in human history we need to keep coming back to the real purpose, the true essence, of who we are and what we should be doing. To put it in the language of our 1st Scripture Lesson from the book of Jeremiah, we go to broken cisterns that cannot hold water again and again, and so, must be led back to the fountain of living water again and again. We need this passage in the book of Hebrews to stay rooted in what we should be doing. How we should be living. We must stay rooted in the qualities that Christ embodied, so the author of Hebrews writes: “Let mutual love continue.” “Let mutual love continue.” Don’t let it stop. It’s as though the author of Hebrews were saying to us, “You’ve been loved by God, saved by his grace; you’ve memorized the verse, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son” so don’t you accept this love and fail to pass it to your neighbor.” Don’t put a fence around it so that you love the members of your family who you like, the members of your church who you know, and the people who voted for the same people you did. That’s not letting mutual love continue, that’s showing the world that Christian love is for some and not for others. If you think it’s bad that some people think taekwondo is about breaking legs or that physicians stray from the Hippocratic Oath than be disgusted that the Church has lived in such a way that many in our world are convinced that God’s love is for some and not for others. Hebrew’s demands that we “let mutual love continue,” though we’ve left people out according to race, fenced in love according to standards of sexuality, and built up an idol that makes God’s love look like something that not everyone deserves, when nothing could be further from the truth. “Let mutual love continue, and do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Don’t you know that’s true? I was reading in Atlanta Magazine last week about a man named Marshall Rancifer who spends his nights helping homeless people. He gives them food, takes them to find medical care, and if needed, when they’re ready, into recovery for addiction. According to the article he’s helped over 2,000 people get off the streets, but his story started when he himself was homeless, and found help and comfort in the shelter at Central Presbyterian Church downtown. We don’t often know what’s going on in the life of the strangers we meet, but too often our assumption is that they’re probably up to no good and should be avoided, when the book of Hebrews urges us to entertain the possibility that the ones we call stranger might be an angel poised to change the world or even Christ himself. “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (And) Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured” even though it is so easy to forget every last one of them. They put jails and prisons where they do, way out from the road, near the landfill and under the cover of a hillside so that we won’t have to trouble ourselves with the thought of them. However, I saw a picture this week that brought their struggle right into my living room. It was a picture of all the rosaries collected back in 2007 from men and women detained for illegally crossing the border. Of course, it’s true that this issue has seen greater press coverage recently, but the problem goes back longer and the root cause is universal: that men and women filled with hope move north from South and Central America to try and find a better life. When I saw the rosaries their faith became clear, and so did their humanity. “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured [for are they not God’s children too?] (And) let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.” Some reflections of scholar and Episcopal Priest, Gray Temple helped me to understand this part better: “You come to resemble what you admire. People who admire money get green and crinkly. People who admire computers grow user-unfriendly. People who admire youth get juvenile.” And I would add that people who can’t stop looking will never know satisfaction. On the other hand, “People who actively and deliberately admire Jesus Christ come to resemble him” and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Isn’t that the point of this whole lesson in Hebrews? And maybe that’s the point of our entire religion: that Jesus’ life is to be mirrored in you and me. So, as you consider this table today, be mindful of the life of the one who has prepared it. The one who, though he was the King of Kings, set the table and waits on us as a servant. This food he has prepared is his body, and this wine, it is his blood; both he offers that we might know our worth and the worth of our neighbor whom he has prepared it for. The bill will come, but he has already paid it with his life. All he asks is that the light that shines in him, shine also in you and me. May it be so. Amen.

Our God Is a Consuming Fire

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 1: 4-10 and Hebrews 12: 18-29 Sermon Title: Our God Is a Consuming Fire Preached on August 25, 2019 The amount of communication we’ve received from our children’s teachers this year has been impressive. Among many other messages, this past week we received one teacher’s newsletter, which began this way: Last week was a very busy week of learning new routines and diving right into this year’s assigned concepts and standards. The students have had a lot of new responsibilities and expectations and many have already eagerly been working to take them on. It is important that we, as the community and families that surround these students, frequently encourage them, remind them how much we believe in them, and maintain the high expectations that we know they are capable of achieving. I thought this message was quite inspirational, but in light of today’s Scripture Lessons, I’d like to reframe some of her language to what might be even more motivating. I wonder how it would feel to parents if their children’s teacher sent home a message like this: Your children are in dire need of reform. They stand on the cusp of abject failure and doom, performing so far below their assigned concepts and standards that their minds are like a deep darkness. So, while today my classroom is all gloom, like a tempest, I will drown their misconceptions and pluck up and pull down their laziness. Some might tremble with fear at the sight of me, but parents, please encourage and remind them that my class is a consuming fire to burn up their ignorance, that wisdom might shine out of each one of them. I don’t imagine such a message would be received well, while again and again this is the message of Scripture. Radical change is necessary. Old habits must be left behind, and there is no time for mincing words. Even Jesus, when he walked the earth said, among other things, “I will separate the wheat from the chaff. I will put a new heart within you [because (to paraphrase) the heart you have isn’t getting you where you need to go].” The Prophets, especially, used the same kind of language to describe God’s work in the world: Amos spoke of the plumb line used by God to measure the crookedness of our society’s walls, that we might be rebuilt with justice and righteousness. Malachi said that our God is like a refiner of silver, who will heat us and refine us until we reflect his image, or that He is like a fuller who will scrub us with fuller’s soap until all impurity is bleached out of us. These are images that are familiar enough in Scripture, but teachers can’t talk this way. Or can you imagine if your doctor looked over your blood work and quoted from the prophet Isaiah: “You have become like one who is unclean, and all your righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. You are fading like a leaf, and your iniquities, like the wind, are going to take you away.” That’s just not how people talk, but why? My sense is that in our world today, it’s because parents who received a harsh message from their child’s teacher would move their child to a different class as soon as possible. Likewise, we want our doctors to be nice and we’ll change doctors if ours isn’t, which is normal enough, however where is the line between being nice and tolerating bad behavior? Where is the line between being kind and mollifying those who are hurting themselves? Where is the line between lying and telling the truth? We are a people who need to change and we live in a world that needs to change. I know it, you know it. But who among us wants to be corrected? Isn’t it much nicer to be affirmed? This week President Trump re-tweeted a quote about himself from Wayne Allen Root who said, “President Trump is the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world.” According to the Washington Post, encouraged by these accolades the President said, “I am the chosen one,” which is a bold statement. It might be going out on a limb a little bit, but this morning I’d like to say that, maybe he’s not exactly right about that. However, this is how we all are in a sense. Even when reform is needed, we’d rather be patted on the back. What must be addressed are the bad habits that clog our arteries, but we don’t want to change our diet. On the road to education, what must be confronted first is the reality of ignorance in a culture of persistent denial, but critical words are hard to hear, and I wonder if that’s because we fear that we are either wheat or chaff, not both. That’s been a problem of mine for a long time, though I’m learning to deal with it. I left Marietta High School thinking that I was all wheat, thought there was plenty of chaff to deal with. I graduated with a 3.7 grade point average, which at first, sounds pretty good. Then I arrived at Presbyterian College and realized that maybe padding my Senior year with two periods of shop and one of weight training hadn’t been such a good idea. I tested right into remedial English where I had to face the reality that there were big holes in my education. For example, I didn’t understand how to choose which article, “a” or “an,” should go before an adjective of noun. My teacher noticed this and when she suggested I go and get some help from a tutor it was a blow to my self-esteem. I faced an important decision then: heed her advice or try to change teachers. You know the right answer here but think about how some people view higher education. I could have just gone back home telling my parents that, “grandpa was right. The academy’s been taken over by the liberals who teach evolution and insist that I use the correct determiners in my sentences.” If Jesus said he will be separating the wheat from the chaff, before we can deal with such a challenge, we must first be assured that we are not the chaff. If the prophets said that we are in need of reform, first we must believe that we are worth reforming. If our God is a consuming fire, first we must know that they hymn has it right: it’s our dross that he’ll consume and our gold that he’ll refine, because our God doesn’t want us going up in smoke. Too many of us can’t hear criticism, because when we hit walls in life, when we make mistakes, we think we’re the mistake. Far too many of us confuse correction with condemnation and refinement with rejection. That’s true. We think of grades on a test the same way we think of grades on an egg carton. Some are “As”, a lucky few “AAs”, but once one is labeled as a “bad egg,” he’s fed to the pigs in the slop bucket. Not so with God. Such labeling might make sense with eggs, but don’t be confused. It’s never that way with God. With God, redemption and not rejection is always the point. Consider our First Scripture Lesson. Here we have that great story of Jeremiah the young prophet. He’s only a boy. Then God came along and spoke right to him. A special responsibility He gives Jeremiah, to “pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow,” which sounds quite violent, unless you understand the character of God. For God treats His people the way a gardener weeds his garden. God looks upon the plot and says, “Sure, there is work to do.” “Sure, weeds must be pulled and rocky soil tilled,” but God isn’t going to reject the garden for its defects. God is going to refine the garden until it bears fruit. In the book of Hebrews, it’s the same story. In our Second Scripture reading there is a blazing fire. Darkness, gloom, and a tempest. The sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken. The message is terrifying but remember that this message to us comes from God, who doesn’t give up on His people. You see, by the testimony of Scripture, what becomes clear is God’s intention, that we, be not condemned, but corrected; not rejected, but refined. Our God is a consuming fire, and knowing His character what will be consumed? We fear it will be all of who we are. Only, according to Hebrews, it is for the removal of what can be shaken, that what cannot be shaken may remain. This is how we must understand hardship and trials, test scores and doctor’s appointments, divorces and lawsuits. If life is hard, let us let go of the parts of ourselves that hold us back. If there are bumps in the road, let them shake off our baggage, not derail our journey. When we are tried and persecuted, let us give up on our broken ways of doing things to learn something new. But, to do that, something has to change. We can’t turn back to the old ways; like the Ancient Hebrew people, to have new life we must leave Egypt behind. To bear fruit, we must allow our weeds to be pulled. To receive the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, we must allow the removal of what can be shaken that what is eternal might remain. I believe that’s true, and I believe it’s just like that for a lot of new parents. It’s not all smiles and cuteness, for a baby requires a parent to leave an old life behind. So, when some people call babies little bundles of joy, I don’t. I can think of baptisms that were like trying to baptize a racoon, and I see most babies as wreaking balls who renovate their parents’ lives completely. I think parenthood is something like an old State Farm Insurance commercial. This one featured a man who says he’s never getting married in one scene, and in the next he’s buying a wedding ring. Then he tells his wife in an airplane surrounded by crying babies that they’re never having kids, and in the next scene his wife is delivering their first child. As he cleans a crayon drawing off the wall of their house he says, “we’re never having another kid,” to which his wife responds: “I’m pregnant.” The commercial ends with this man who made all these declarations about what he was never going to do, but on the couch surrounded by his wife and children he voices one last never: “I’m never letting go.” If our God is a consuming fire, then a father must often decide whether or not he will allow the motorcycle to be consumed, because there isn’t room enough in the garage or his life for that and the minivan. Those who go off to school face the same decision. If our God is a consuming fire will they allow their ego to go up in flames that they might learn more than they already think they know? Will politicians listen and change or just go on defending what’s always been? As we age will we allow our freedom, independence, and our driver’s license to go up in flames that we might still hold onto dignity and safety? Our God is preparing us for a new life, so what will we hold onto? Our old life? Our career? Our pride? Our innocence? Our fear? When the earth shakes and the flames come, let go of vanity, that what cannot be shaken, that what is eternal might remain. Amen.

Strangers and Foreigners on the Earth

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20 and Hebrews 11: 1-3 and 8-16 Sermon Title: Strangers and foreigners on the earth Preached on August 11, 2019 My new friend Van Pearlburg asked me if I was going to be preaching from the book of Galoshes again this week. I told him that “It was Colossians, not Galoshes. And no, this week the sermon was about faith based on a passage from the book of Hebrews.” But what is faith? According to our Second Scripture Lesson, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Such a definition as this one broadens the way we think about faith, for we generally confine any talk of faith to the world of religion. In reality, there are all kinds of things we don’t know for certain are there, we just know they are. We have faith that they’re there. Take snakes for example. Jim and Flora Speed had a snake in the house week before last. They told me this story knowing they might hear it again, and here it is. They suspected it was in the catch-all room of their house. Their catch-all room came with a door that opens to the side yard, and do you think Flora needed proof that a snake was in there to avoid going into that room? No. Faith is the assurance of things not seen, and she didn’t have to see the snake to know that it was there. That’s faith. It’s not faith in God, per say. It’s faith in the existence of a snake, but my point is that so often we don’t need to know for sure that something is there to act as though it is. That’s faith. To act on her belief all she needed was the rumor of a snake. The shadow of a snake spotted by her husband. The skin of a snake discovered by a woman named Amanda who came over to catch the snake. Amanda from Animal Control came over to the house. Looked around the room where the snake was thought to be, and she said, “It’s under that book shelf.” “How do know that?” Dr. Speed asked. Could she see it? No. Amanda just knows enough about snakes: where they like to live and how they act, so after moving the books from the bookshelf, Amanda got her reward. A fat black rat snake that she took back to her property to reduce the rodent population. You see, you don’t have to know something for certain to be right. That’s faith. You don’t have to see something for it to be there. That’s faith, and we can apply that way of thinking to understand what faith in God is all about. Do we know for certain that God is at work in the world? Can we see God’s hand moving? All we need is to understand better the character of God and we will know well enough what God is doing and where God will probably be, but do we know God as well as Amanda knows snakes? Maybe not? It’s a story that’s been told again and again, that a man full of doubts went to visit his pastor in her study. “Pastor, I’m afraid I’ve lost my faith. I just don’t believe in God anymore.” His pastor responded, “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in, because I’m willing to bet that I don’t believe in that God either.” The God described in our Second Scripture Lesson is one who makes promises. Those who embody what it means to be faithful are the ones who believe that once God said it will be done, it will be, regardless of whether or not they can see it in plain sight. Abraham was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. Isaac and Jacob, were heirs with him of the same promise, but lived their lives in tents. Sarah was barren, [but] considered him faithful who had promised, even though her husband was as good as dead. And through them [Sarah and Abraham] descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” What is faith in God then? Is it holding fast to the belief that the Earth was created in seven 24-hour days? Is it never relenting on the conviction that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible? Or that Jesus was able to walk on the water as on the land? Believing all those things is just fine, however, do not be confused. For faith in God as defined by our Second Scripture Lesson has to do, not with some exacting standard of fundamental belief, but the absolute conviction that God has promised us a city, and while we have yet to arrive, while we can’t yet see it, we are still on our way there. Sometimes we make faith out to be some big, high academy, theological word. It’s not. It’s tangible. Then, at other times we make faith out to be some backwoods, anti-science, word. It’s not that either. It’s required of all of us, especially today. In our world today, to send a child to school is an act of faith. A new school year has begun. I’ve been walking our Lily to school each morning. Her little sister is now going to the magnet school out on Aviation, but Lily and I still walk to school together until we get to the corner of the school yard. That’s where she stops, gives me a hug, and walks on without me. I stand there and watch until she makes it inside. Most days while I’m standing there, she’ll turn around to wave at me. When she does that sometimes I’m overcome with emotions. How much I love and care for her. I’ll imagine what it will be like to drop her off at college. I stand there staring as she walks into her school and think about all these things that I can’t yet see or control, and I’ll pray that God will watch over her and all the other children in that school because ours is a world of uncertainty where anything could happen on any day. It takes faith for me to let her go. Only now I’m not sure that I’ve had enough. That’s because of what I learned just last Friday. Sara dropped Lily off, and on the way to school she said, “Mama. Did you know that when Daddy drops me off at school he just stands there and stares at me the whole time I’m walking? I know he does, because I turn around on my way to the doors, and wave for him to go on, but he just stands there.” What am I to say about these things? What I’d say is that too often this father is more controlled by fear than guided by faith. Of course, it’s easy to be afraid as a father. Maybe it’s impossible not to be, but when we give into our fear all we can do is stare. Immobilized, all we can do is hold our children to our chests. Controlled by terror, we react to the world without hope, and lose sight of the new world that God has promised. So, don’t look to my example. Look somewhere else. Look to Abraham, who could have turned back, but kept going. To Isaac and Jacob, who lived their whole lives in tents, but were preparing for something else. Look to Sarah, who was barren, but never gave up hope. Look to them and know that while around us is fear and hatred, Violence and war. While just walking into the Walmart takes courage – those who never fail to believe that a better world is coming and are bold enough to walk on toward it, are those who will have their reward. That’s what faith is all about, you see. Though tempted surely, they did not settle in and grow used to some reality of fear, terror, death, racism, ignorance, and hatred. No. They were not, nor are we citizens of this world of shadow, for God has promised us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. This afternoon at 1:00 our Mayor, Thunder Tumlin, has called on Marietta’s churches to assemble in prayer, especially for those cities most recently ravaged by gun violence. He called and asked me to help him pull it together, which I was glad to do, though I’m tempted, like many, to grow frustrated with a society who offers “thoughts and prayers,” but not much else. Today I feel differently, however. For if we all just stop to remember that God promises us a new heaven and a new earth, our thoughts are open to a different world than the one we have now, and if we are just bold enough to raise our voice in prayer, than, like the great heroes of our faith, we have called on God to help us make it so. Indeed, He will. So, let us have faith enough to follow. Amen.

Seeking What Is Above, Tied to What Is Below

Scripture Lessons: Hosea 11: 1-11 and Colossians 3: 1-11 Preached on August 4, 2019 Sermon title: Seeking What Is Above, Tied to What Is Below I recently had lunch with two great leaders in our church, Mary Margaret and Clem Doyle. Over the course of lunch, in addition to just catching up and enjoying time together, Clem wanted to know what obstacles I thought we might need to overcome as a church in the next few years. What is standing in the way of our progress? This was a question I wasn’t really prepared to answer. So, I’ve been thinking about it and talking about ever since. Buck Buchanon said it best. That the great and obvious obstacle standing in the way of growth, evangelism, and the spread of the Gospel here at First Presbyterian Church are the two front doors. Most every church has doors like ours. Nice doors that swing right open. Ours even have someone like Harry Vaughn with a smiling face who will open the doors for you. Still, there are a lot of people out in the world who are afraid to go through them. Now why is that? I believe it’s right there in Colossians: being a Christian demands that we change. There are habits we’ve grown used to that we must leave behind. A requirement of the Christian life is that we don’t stay the same as we’ve always been, so Paul charges us in our Second Scripture Lesson: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth… Put to death, whatever in your is earthly.” Christians have to be different. We have to change, and change is hard, so not everyone is just going to walk through those doors. Grace abounds and new life is here, but change is required and change is hard. It’s hard for all of us. And I want to do it well. I am a pastor after all. But more than that, I want to be a Christian, and I know that our religion calls me to a different standard of behavior modeled on the life of Christ. Now what does that look like? His first miracle in the Gospel of John took place at a party. When the wine ran out, his mother called on him to do something about it. You remember what he did. He didn’t take this opportunity to preach. He didn’t scold anyone. He told some people to fill up the great empty vats with water, and he turned the water into wine. We have to remember that image as we read our Second Scripture Lesson, for when Paul talks about the difference between seeking the things that are above and not on things that are on earth, what he’s really talking about is the difference between being selfish and being mindful of the needs of others. He’s not talking about being antisocial, but how we can be a loving part of the party. We not called to be more judgmental or self-righteous, but kinder and more charitable. When we consider what it means to be earthly, we must keep in mind the way of life that Jesus modeled and compare it to the way of the religious authorities whom he opposed, for while Jesus never left the wedding party, still today there are still plenty of Christians who will tell you that to follow Jesus we must leave having fun behind. Think about Miss Watson in Huckleberry Finn. Miss Watson was telling him about heaven. How he must stop being so bad so when he dies he can go to the good place, which she described as a place where “all a body would have to do was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.” Hearing that, Huck didn’t think much of it. To make matters worse, he asked Miss Watson if she thought his friend Tom Sawyer would go there. When she said, “not by a considerable sight” Huck was glad to go to the bad place, where there might be more exciting things to do, and at least he’d have a friend. Plenty of people think like Huckleberry Finn. When they hear what they have to give up, they don’t want to change. Then, the doors of our churches become obstacles that the likes of Huckleberry Finn don’t want to go through, and who can blame them? I don’t want to play the harp with old Miss Watson either. Later in the book it becomes even more challenging for Huck. Later comes the moment in Huckleberry Finn where he makes this very important choice. He’s run away with Miss Watson’s slave, Jim. The heavy weight of stealing, what Huck and so many others believed was her property, weighs heavy on his shoulders. In an attempt to do what was right, he got a piece of paper and a pencil “all glad and excited” to tell her that a Mr. Phelps has [Jim] and will give him up for a reward if she’ll just send it. After writing this he said, “I felt good and all washed clean of sin.” He thinks he’s finally set his mind on what is heavenly. But, then, he doesn’t send it straight off, but lays the paper down and sits there thinking. Mark Twain writes that “he got to thinking over their trip down the river. He could see Jim before him all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms; they were a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.” So, after considerable thought, finally Huck said, “all right, then, I’ll go to hell” and tore up the letter. We get confused this way sometimes too. What is it that we must give up? What does it mean to be earthly? What does it look like to seek the things that are above? Only, consider how right-side up Huckleberry Finn had it when he thought he was doing it all up-side down. The Gospel does call us to a new way of life. The Gospel does call us to change, but in reading this passage from Colossians, recognize that the way of life that we are called to is being able to see that Christ is all and in all, even in those society has called property or worse. That’s what it means to leave behind what is earthly. That’s what it means to set our minds on things that are above. For down here on the earth we are so often blind to the humanity of our neighbors. When Paul writes, “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed,” Know that being earthly means gratifying our desires at another’s expense. Being earthly means cheating our neighbor as though money were more important than people. Being earthly means using faith to justify slavery or so many other abominations. Being earthly is being foolish with our words. Saying things like, “I wish they’d just go back where they came from.” This phrase and so many like it that we hear more and more these days, keep us tethered to the earth and trapped in the past. It’s not just that our words can hurt or be used to demean and devalue and disempower. It’s that it’s not where we’re from that matters but where we’re going. We Christians must speak using the language of heaven. Our words must reflect the values of that place where, according to our Second Scripture Lesson, there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free. We are called to see, not only the humanity of our neighbor, but the Christ who dwells within him. I could see how important it is to live that way as I was checking out at the Kroger last Friday. It was a hot day. You remember. So, when I was at the Kroger at about 5:00, the woman in front of me had taken off her wig while shopping and put it with her produce in the cart. The reason I know that is because the cashier bagged all this woman’s groceries, then got to the wig and said, “Mam, you forget your hair.” This was at the busy time of the day in the grocery store. Everyone was in there, and when that’s the case it’s easy to be rude to the cashier. It’s easy to forget that Christ dwells within her, but we have to slow down, look her in the eye, value her as person regardless of her station, race, or citizenship status, because we never know, she might be the one to hand us back our hair. “Christ is all and in all” proclaims our Second Scripture Lesson. Remember that and know that how we treat the cashier matters more than whether or not we have beer in our shopping cart. How we treat each other determines whether we are trapped in the prison of selfishness or on our way to the Kingdom of Heaven. I wish the 21-year-old gunman who walked into a Walmart yesterday in El Paso, Texas, killing 20 people wounding 26 others had thought about that. He didn’t. He didn’t understand that what we have done to the least of these, we have done to Him. Consider the One Whom we serve, for though He had every right to rub shoulders with Kings and Queens, instead he washed his disciples’ feet. While he could have come to judge the world, instead he came to save it. He ate with sinners, tax collectors, and all God’s children we fail to see as precious. And He still does. The table is before us. All that is required is that you leave what is earthly behind, and step towards the Kingdom of Heaven. That you give up on status, for here, all are one. That you give up on self-righteousness, for here, all is grace. When we all choose to live this way, the doors of our churches become no obstacle, for the grace we receive here is what all people long for. Amen.

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.