Listen, so that you may live

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 55: 1-9 and Luke 13: 1-9 Sermon Title: “Listen, so that you may live” Last Wednesday Night I was very excited to hear about the renovation currently under way at Central High School. The principal there, Mr. Roger White, was the speaker last Wednesday, and based on what I heard he seems to be a man who loves his job, who prays for his students, and who is making sure that the classrooms of this new high school will inspire students to maximize their potential. I think it’s a gift to the students to have this kind of a principal, and more than anything else I heard in Roger White’s presentation a desire to better educate all the students of Maury County because he seems to believe that if any student works hard enough and is given the opportunity to learn, then regardless of background or home-life, he or she can go out into the world as a productive citizen. In other words, Principal Roger White can see potential. He hopes that such potential will be harnessed in the brand new science lab, which is to be state of the art, and his description of this science lab reminded me of how important science is, although it’s a subject not always appreciated by the student. Molly Grace DeMoss, a member of our youth group, is always quick to smile and laugh, but as she was telling Marcy Lay and me about the dogfish that she’s been dissecting at Columbia Academy where she goes to school, she was less than enthusiastic. I remember not loving science class a whole lot either. We dissected a frog and a lamb’s eye, and every year we had to participate in the science fair, which I didn’t see too much of a point in. I had no interest in becoming a scientist myself, but what I value now is that regardless of my ambitions, I had to learn the scientific method. Now that’s the part that I know is valuable for everyone. Using the scientific method, you start by forming a hypothesis. And this hypothesis is a conjecture, an assumption, that is then tested through an experiment in which you either prove or disprove the hypothesis. This is a very good tool, not just for scientists but for everyone, and I say so because I have become convinced that too many people are in our world with a hypothesis that has never really been put to the test. The untested hypothesis is a problem, and I see evidence of the problem all over the place. I watch the news, I go to Facebook, I listen to yourself talk, and I notice that there are so many assumptions in my head and out in the world, so many untested hypotheses that I put in use without first putting my assumption to the test. And I am not alone – a lot of people are doing this. For example – watching news coverage of recent events, especially coverage of the Black Lives Matter campaign, you get the impression that many have formed the hypothesis that all police officers are racist. Certainly our Chief of Police here in Columbia, Tennessee deals with this assumption every day and it offends him to no end, because a person only needs to interact with the members of his force to find that this hypothesis is far from fact. But it appears that there are others who live as though all young black men are criminals. And there are plenty who talk and act as though all Democrats are heartless baby killers. Other who form the hypothesis that all Republicans brainless fear mongers. Are these assumptions true? Absolutely not, but go to Facebook or read the opinion page of the newspaper, and you’ll see it right there plain as day – that there are far too many people who need to go back to High School biology so they can learn again that you can’t just go around and expect to make very many friends if you are all the time making assumptions that have no basis in reality. I’m guilty here. I say things all the time that I wish I could take back, and sometimes I’m afraid to take them back. Sometimes I hold onto these assumptions and I think that’s because human nature makes me afraid of having my hypothesis disproven. Let me tell you what I mean: back in 10th grade I started on my science fair project. My hypothesis was that exposing a plant to crude oil would kill the plant, which was a fashionable thing to do at that time because it wasn’t so long after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and I wanted to prove that the spilled oil would hurt the plants, but after 4 or 5 days of watering one set of plants with water, the other with motor oil, oddly enough there was no difference in plant growth, so I just pulled the leaves off the plants that I had been watering with motor oil. I took these pictures and included them on a poster board to add some substance to my presentation, but unfortunately, one of the ripped off leaves was in one of the pictures, and when my teacher (who noticed the evidence of my manipulation of the scientific method), she handed me my report back with a very low grade, and what’s worse is that she wrote across the top, “Now this is just plain tacky.” How much better it would have been for me to just let the research disprove my hypothesis. If the hypothesis is never really put to the test, either by those who manipulate the findings or others who don’t even bother with an experiment, all these assumptions go around our world as though they were facts. This is a problem today and it was a problem 2,000 years ago as well, so you’ll see that in our 2nd Scripture Lesson there is also a hypothesis. When faced with two tragic events – first when a group of Galilean pilgrims were murdered on their way to make a sacrifice at the Temple and then when a tower fell and killed 18 people, the survivors needed answers so they formed their hypothesis: the ones who died were sinners. Another way to say it is, “What goes around comes around.” Or to quote Scripture: “You reap what you sow.” This is not a bad hypothesis because it’s sometimes true. Sometimes the ones who died met their end because of their own misdeeds, but just because it is sometimes true doesn’t mean it is always true, so a hypothesis like this one requires an experiment, investigation, more facts, and thankfully, this group goes to Jesus with their hypothesis. “Here's our assumption Jesus,” they seem to have said, “our hypothesis is that those who died tragically had it coming, what do you think?” I don’t have to tell you how crucial this quest for more information is. All in the news this week has been Coach Butch Jones of the University of Tennessee football team. Is he guilty of covering up a horrible case of abuse? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but I have a bad feeling that he is going to lose his job over this thing regardless because too many people don’t care about the facts, they’ve already decided. There is danger in not going any deeper than our assumptions, so we must be thankful that this group probably went to Jesus saying, “the ones who died, they were sinners, right?” And Jesus said: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” And then he tells them a story: “Let me tell you what is really going on here. You are like a fig tree who failed to bear fruit. Today you were spared, but you will be cut down if you fail to produce fruit again. If you fail to produce fruit again, if you fail to repent, then you, every one of you will be cut down.” By answering their questions this way, he challenged, not just the hypothesis but the whole premise of the project. They thought they were dissecting a dead frog, they thought they were investigating for the cause of death, and Jesus tells them to start investigating the cause of their life. “You want to know why they died, but I say, how lucky you are to be alive.” That’s what he told them, but what would he tell us? In some ways we are different: we don’t go around today blaming people for dying so often but how many of us subscribe to the Daily Herald just for the obituaries. So we all ask who died and why, which is one question but is not the question that Jesus believes is worth your time, for Jesus asks, “which one of you will bear fruit, which one of you deserves to live?” There’s a man who had a fig tree and he came looking for fruit on it but there was none there, so he said to the gardener (who is Jesus by the way), ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” But the gardener responds, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ We started with a hypothesis that attempted to answer the question, “Why did they die?” But now Jesus has turned the tables to ask a very different question, “For what were you spared?” And having been spared, having been saved, will you bear fruit? The point he’s making is significant. He’s saying that there’s more to living than not dying. There’s more to being innocent than not getting caught. And there’s more to today than the fact that you woke up on this side of the grave because today we have a chance to change. I was moved by the funeral for Mrs. Evans which was here yesterday morning. The man who preached was a long-time friend of hers – they met when she was in her 80’s so that means they had 20 years to solidify their relationship. She gave this man instructions for what to say, and so she told him not to make his part in the funeral a eulogy, “don’t talk about me,” she says, “because if they don’t know me by now than they’ve missed their chance. Talk instead about Jesus, because they haven’t missed their chance to get to know him.” If we are all fig trees, fruitless fig trees, we have been spared by the Gardener who can change us. Who sees in us the potential to bear fruit, and desires to fertilize and work our soil so that we might do just that. Now this charge is a gift isn’t it? Why was that science teacher so disgusted in my presentation back in 10th grade? Possibly because she knew I could do better. Why is it a gift that Roger White sees in his students’ potential? Because not everyone does. This week I heard the story of a young man who was arrested some years ago for stealing a sweat shirt. The officer happened to call Chris Poynter of the Boys and Girls Club to come and speak with him, and when the officer asked this young man why he would do something so foolish as to steal, the young man asked, “Why should I care? Why should I care what happens to me? Why should I care if I get arrested? No one ever expected anything out of me. My father left, my mother abuses me, no one cares so why should I?” If ever there was a hypothesis that needed to be put to the test, then this was it. If Jesus were there, he would have looked on that bare fig tree of a young man and told him, “all you need is some nourishment, all you need is a chance, and I am the gardener who can provide it.” Yes, he is and yes you can, and today is the day. Today you have to opportunity to do just that if you will just accept the gardener’s gift of grace. Amen.

See, your house is left to you

Scripture Lessons: Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 and Luke 13: 31-35, p. 77 Sermon Title: See, your house is left to you I suppose that the one of the greatest challenges in preaching is maintaining the congregation’s attention. This is a big challenge for me, and sometimes I feel like I’ve succeeded, but at other times I know I’ve failed completely. I try hard at keeping your attention however, and my favorite preaching advice is said to come from the great comedian Groucho Marks, “That every sermon should begin with a joke and have a really good ending, and those two parts should be as close together as possible.” As I said before, certainly there are many times when I realize I’ve failed in the task of keep your attention, and sometimes I realize that I’ve failed in this task about midway in my sermon, in which case I’m tempted to stop talking right then and just call it a day. What will sometimes happen is that I’ll finish a paragraph only to realize that I’ve just made you suffer through sentences that should have been left out during editing, or even worse, I go on too long about some subject only to look out and recognize that I’ve droned and droned so much that I’ve put someone to sleep or inspired someone else to start working on their grocery list. The greatest sign of failure in this regard is to find a bulletin on Monday morning, left in the hymnal covered in tick-tack-toe games. But this is the challenge every preacher I suppose. We’ve all been called to speak a valuable message, to proclaim the Gospel, but to proclaim it in such a way that people actually hear it, which isn’t as easy as I once thought it would be. I’ve found that jokes help sometimes, and I’m probably guilty of trying to tell too many jokes in a sermon in the hopes of maintaining everyone’s attention, but better yet – the foolproof way to get just about any congregation’s attention, is to use feminine pronouns when referring to God. This is an interesting reality since we all know that God is not a man or a woman, but what we are used to is using the pronoun “He” when referring to the divine, so when the preacher employees the feminine, all at once everyone is listening, all at once the one who was sleeping is now awake and asking his wife, “Did he just say what I think he said?” Maybe his wife is thinking, “Well yes he did, and it’s about time.” Maybe, or maybe not, but regardless, what seems true to me is that while most often Scripture employees the masculine pronoun in reference to the divine, “He, him, king, or father” to mention just a few, there are examples right there in Scripture for anyone to see when God is described as like a mother bear who defends her cubs (Hosea 13: 8), like a nesting mother eagle who stirs up her nest and hovers over her young (Deuteronomy 32: 11), or better yet, here in the Gospel of Luke chapter 13, the Lord describes himself as a mother hen, who longs to gather her brood under her wings. We humans tend to speak of God using metaphors, and God as Father is the one that we hear of most, but thinking of God as a mother hen brings something new and describes something significant that I know many people might embrace. We think of God as a Father for many reasons, but maybe especially because traditionally this metaphor of Father speaks to the truth that we stand to inherit much – eternal life especially, but just as valid and just as true is to think of God as a Mother, and if we think of God as a mother hen we have a valuable and true metaphor that brings both a lesson on the nature of God and the realities of the world because according to this metaphor, on the one hand is God who, like a mother hen longs to gather us under her wings where we’ll be safe, but on the other hand, if the mother hen longs to gather us and protect us, implicit is the truth that there is much in this life that she longs to protect us from. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” I wonder if that sounds like your mother. In some ways it sounds like mine, very much like mine, because there were and still are so many things that she wants to protect me from. I remembered this past week how years ago she wanted to protect me from cigarettes, and not only was she on my case, but I am confident that she enlisted the help of my doctor who told me during an appointment when I was 13 or 14 years old that my asthma was so bad that if I ever so much as tried a puff of a cigarette I might just die there on the spot. Regardless of whether or not that was true, I don’t know because I’m still too scared to try. That’s not entirely true actually, I have tested the water, but she was successful overall. She kept me under those wings and away from smoking, but she couldn’t keep me completely away from my friends who did. The mother hen has her work cut out for her, because there comes a time when the chicks want to go out into the world and need the approval, not of their mother so much as their peers, so while Willie Nelson sings, “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,” what Willie doesn’t get at is the reality that Mama can try to “make them be doctors and lawyers and such” but they may not be willing. My mom couldn’t keep me from wanting the approval of my peers, and when it came to a number of other temptations I was unwilling to be gathered under her wings because I wanted not her protection but their acceptance. That’s what the metaphor employed by the Lord really says to me now – that while our God is like a mother hen who longs to protect us from danger, we are too often unwilling to go to her because the mother hen’s approval is not the only approval that we want or need. Do you remember how much it mattered to have the right clothes in high school? At my mom’s high school, the thing to have were these knee high plaid socks, and her parents weren’t the kind of people who put much stock in being trendy so she only had one pair, which she washed every night so she could wear them again the next day. And last Thursday in the comic strips you might have seen Blondie. The little neighbor kid comes by, Elmo is his name, and he pulls up to Blondie and Dagwood’s house on a hover board and reports, “I like my skateboard better, but I had to have one of these new hover boards.” “Why” Dagwood asks. “Cuz everybody else has one,” little Elmo Tuttle responds. In Europe, did you hear that those things were catching on fire? Something about the charger that you’d plug into the wall. You’d plug it in to charge the thing’s batteries and would end up setting your carpet on fire. And maybe you wonder why a parent would buy a child something that might set the carpet on fire, but then you’d be underestimating a child’s determination to fit in no matter how dangerous fitting in might be. You know that every 16-year-old wants a car that will go as fast as it possibly can. Not one of them wants the old beat up minivan, but it’s the muscle cars that they race down the interstate, and the mother hen longs to gather them under her wings, put those kids in a nice safe Volvo so that she can drive them all to the prom, but they will be unwilling. And of course they are – because what the chick knows is that he wants to fit in, but the what the mother hen knows is the danger that is out there. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you.” And how it was left. Many Bible scholars believe that here in Luke chapter 13, Jesus is speaking prophetically, alluding to the destruction of Jerusalem that would come at the hands of the Romans just a few years after his death. Here he is already mourning because he knows the tragedy that is coming, and like a mother, her knows the pain of watching the ones he loves keep on down the path to destruction rather than listen and be gathered under the wings of the Mother Hen. Rather than be gathered, they will keep to the ways that they know: the ways that gain them the acceptance of their peers the ways that made them respectable in the eyes of the powerful the ways that empowered the wealthy and dehumanized the poor the ways that made the Temple a den of money changers rather than a house of the Lord the ways that would stone the woman caught in adultery while calling the hypocrite a priest the ways that oppress the foreigner and silence the prophet the ways that will lead to death – and the Mother Hen calls to her children still, because destruction will come again and again and again, and the foolish will choose to huddle on the bandwagon that leads to doom. There are all kinds of things to do, and while everyone wants a little religion when the end comes, like every teenager of all time, we seem to be thinking that the end isn’t coming any time soon, so we don’t invest our time as we should, we so rarely stop and think about what truly matters. We wake up, go to work, come home, turn on the TV, eat some dinner, go to bed, and wake up the next day and do the same thing, which works out OK so long as nothing bad happens, but the mother hen knows that something bad will happen and she keeps telling us that we need to be getting ready for it now. Mr. Herold Lucas, he came to church here, ran Lucas Chevrolet and he told his children that when they moved to a new place they right away needed to find a doctor, a lawyer, a car salesman, and a church, because you never know when you’re going to need them, and it’s true. Dr. Henry Strock came here as a guest preacher and told us that roots are for the wind, so put them down because the winds are coming. Danger is on the way, so go to the Mother Hen, but how unwilling we all are – imagining that we have all the time in the world. You know already that this Thursday we’ll host an important meeting, to hear the history of the 1946 Columbia Race Riot. There have been meetings leading up to the event and Dr. Christa Martin, your vice-mayor, she says during one of those meetings: “we are getting together now, we are developing these friendships now, because we know that we are going to need them later.” I believe that she’s right about that, and after the racially motivated shooting in Charleston, South Carolina so many of the pastors of your community, so many of your elected officials – the city mayor, the county mayor, the sheriff – we’ve all been talking, getting to know each other, because of what the Mother Hen knows is true – that what happened 70 years ago here is happening again today – but Columbia, TN doesn’t have to be Ferguson, MS. To create a new future, we must listen and learn from the one who calls us out of our homes and our normal routines to challenge the life that we’ve all accepted as normal. He is like a Mother Hen, calling on you to take comfort under his wings, but to get there you have to leave so much behind. Amen.

And the devil said

Scripture Lessons: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 and Luke 4: 1-13, NT page61 Sermon: “And the devil said” Today is Valentine’s Day, and I hope that me saying so reminds any husbands who might have forgotten. This is a good day to show someone how much you love them by saying so or by buying them something. I suppose that the most traditional things to buy for the ones we love on Valentine’s Day are flowers or chocolates, but there are non-traditional gifts as well. For example, I know of one man who received nose hair trimmers from his valentine, which is a gift that says “I love you” but this gift says “I love you” in a very particular way. Unlike flowers and chocolates which both say, “I love you,” nose hair trimmers say, “I love you so much that I’m going to help you fix this problem that you have that no one else is willing to talk with you about.” Today is the first Sunday of Lent. And if the season of Lent is a gift, if observing Lent is a gift to Christians, it’s that kind of a gift. It’s the kind of gift from God that says, “I love you so much that I’m going to help you fix this problem that no one else is willing to talk with you about.” So during these 40 Days we are given the gift of penitence – a time to examine our lives, our habits, our thoughts, our relationships, especially the broken parts of ourselves that we don’t want to look at and that only those who truly love us are ever willing to talk with us about. God loves us enough to call our brokenness to our attention, and because we believe that our God is slow to anger and abiding in steadfast love we are invited to practice self-examination without fear of punishment, for God is not interested in our punishment nearly so much as our God is interested in leading us towards a more abundant life. We are invited then, to go with Jesus into the desert – to join him for 40 days in this quiet place without the distractions that keep us from dealing with whatever ails us. We are invited to go without, to give up something that we love, just as our Lord went without food. And we are invited to face our own demons, just as Jesus faced the devil himself. That’s the goal of all of this – we are leaving the world that we know and are joining our Lord in the desert, and it’s a feat of time travel to go meet Jesus in the desert 2,000 years ago, but the Bible is full of instances where the past is made present again for the redemption of God’s people and it is no different with us now. Deuteronomy 26, our first Scripture lesson is a good example of just such an instance in Scripture where time is irrelevant because this liturgy employs the present tense when remembering a time long ago. That’s why is says, “A wandering Aramean was MY ancestor.” It’s not because he literally was, but because in joining with the faithful of generations long past “they” becomes “we”, “their” becomes “our” and so we say, “He went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated US harshly and afflicted US, by imposing hard labor on US, WE cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard OUR voice and saw OUR affliction, OUR toil, and OUR oppression. The Lord brought US out of Egypt. He brought US into this place and gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.” Us, us, us we, we, we – you can see that this lesson from the Old Testament, this ancient liturgy uses personal and present tense pronouns even though all that happened so very long ago to a group of people who we are not, because so much about our faith is rooted in going one step beyond remembering to making the past present once more. It’s like when I take the yellow straw for my daughters’ juice box and I can feel the presence of my grandmother. I can see her taking the yellow straw for my Capri Sun. It’s a ritual that washes the present in the past and we’re reminded once more that the words of Faulkner are true: the past isn’t gone; it isn’t even past. So at Communion later in the service, we’ll sit before the table and do more than remember the One who sacrificed his life for our sake, in this liturgy we call on him to be present to us again, not confined to ancient history but right here and now. The Bible’s not ancient history than. It’s not dates and people to remember. Instead Scripture is the Living Word that will come alive right in front of you if you know how to use it. That’s what hit one of our own church members this Christmas. Jessica Sweeney was in the minivan, kids in the back, the news of the day was that of Syrian refugees forced out of their homeland and seeking refuge somewhere else, and there right in front of her is the Craft Memorial Church’s living Nativity telling the story of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus escaping to Egypt because King Herod forced them out of their homeland. “This is happening right now” she says out loud from the driver’s seat to no one in particular, and her kid’s don’t know what she’s talking about, so the next day she runs up to me on the sidewalk right outside our church – and when she told me the story I couldn’t have been more excited because that’s the point – it is happening right now! Right now we are in the desert with Jesus. Right now we are fasting beside him. And especially - right now Satan is there whispering temptation – not just in his ear but in ours. First: “Command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Second: “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I will give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And third: “Throw yourself down from here,” and to make matters worse, from the Psalms he says, “He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you, and on their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” These are three great temptations of our age – not of some ancient history – but right now we are tempted to be mindful only of the need of our belly, to live is to be satiated. To float through the ocean on some great cruise ship – in the middle of the sea and yet comatose from crab legs while baking in the sun like beached whales. Command this stone to become bread - eat drink and be merry – but is there not more to life than this? Some would say that there is, that better than being full is being powerful, and so the politicians promise that they have all the answers, that they can fix all the problems and return this nation to greatness, but to give all power to any one man or woman, to place on him all your hopes and dreams absolutely is to face the reality that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Still some seek it, and still the powerful reduce their subjects to pawns or consumers without thought to their minds or their bodies and so the children of Flint, Michigan are poisoned by their water because some humans were given more power and authority than they deserved. You see, the devil is with us still. Right here with us now, tempting us to worry not for the state of our souls but only the state of our stomachs; tempting us to pursue power without thought to kindness or decency; and worse yet the devil is with us still tempting us to save ourselves. To preserve ourselves and our way of life. And I say this is worse yet because some of the greatest tragedies of human history were motivated not by hatred but self-preservation. It’s not that Pharaoh hated the Hebrew people, but it was because we were a great nation, mighty and populous. Pharaoh didn’t hate us – he feared us, and so out of self-preservation the Egyptians treated US harshly and afflicted US, by imposing hard labor on us in the hopes of accomplishing the same goal that every oppressor who feared for his life has tried since. More than anything else, it’s this temptation that would not be confined to ancient history, so as a child we’d drive through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina on our way to tour Fort Sumter, but to get to the ferry that would take us there we had to pass by those beautiful old mansions, tall and white. They were as they are still, breathtaking, yet even today they are protected by the most sinister rod iron fences. Spikes sharpened to protect the families who lived inside from the slave revolt they all feared. It was self-preservation that justified the harsh treatment of those slaves in both Egypt and South Carolina, and out of fear for our own lives 70 years ago, white children hid under beds, white fathers watched the streets, and a white mob assembled at our court house because once again the oppressed were rising and the powerful wanted to preserve a way of life that needed to die. “Save yourself,” the devil says, but you must listen instead to the one who says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” Lent is a gift we’ve been given. And we’ve been given it because we are all the time living these unexamined lives, falling into patterns of waking up and getting by without ever thinking about what we should be leaving behind. Just because we were raised this way – that doesn’t mean we should be living this way still. He’s calling you to join him in the desert so you can face your demon and leave your brokenness behind; to walk beside him toward a brighter future. Amen.

Jesus was found alone

Scripture Lessons: Exodus 34: 29-35 and Luke 9: 28-43a, NT pages 69-70 Sermon Title: He was alone There is something about a dentist chair. As soon as I sit in a dentist chair I immediately feel guilty for not flossing, and this pang of guilt leads me to moral urgency and I make a silent promise to myself to floss every day from that point on, and so long as I am in that dentist chair I actually feel as though I am going to do it. I remember that my desk in English class had a similar effect. I’d spend all weekend unburdened by homework, not worried about those chapters of Moby Dick in the slightest, but the second I sat down in my desk the reality of not having read much of anything weighed heavily on my shoulders and I’d make the silent prayer, that if only the teacher wouldn’t call on me today I’d read all those chapters just as soon as I got home from school, but the problem was that I wouldn’t, which points to a reality that I am sure you are aware of – that there is something about certain places. That some places are different in the way that these physical locations have a particular effect on you, and I know that this is true because it is only in the doctor’s office that I am willing to discuss my body mass index. It is only in a shoe store that I will allow another human being to touch my feet or tie my shoes. And it is only when I am ridding on a bicycle that I will wear those ridiculous bicycle shorts. My point in saying this is that there is something about some places – the rules are different – and this is a hard lesson, especially for children to learn. I remember being confused as a child that my parents would be angry with me on the car ride over, but as soon as we walked through the door of my grandparent’s house it was as though everything was just fine – that is, until we walked out the door and were back in the car. Sara and I do the same thing to our children. They know that they can act one way at home – that at home they can relax in a way that would be inappropriate at school – also they have to learn that they can eat snacks with their fingers but must use silverware at the dinner table, that they can run in some places but should walk quietly in others. These are hard rules for children to learn, maybe because it’s a little strange. But think about what happens when people walk in this room. People walk into this sanctuary and they slow down. They take in the way the sun shines through the windows. Men remove their hats. Some will kneel and pray, not because anyone has told them to, but simply because some places have a particular effect on people. So imagine what it must have been like for the disciples to have been up on that mountain top. We read that the disciples watched as Jesus’ complexion changed just as Moses’ did in our 1st Scripture Lesson, but then there was Moses himself with Elijah, both talking with Jesus, both legendary heroes of the faith – and both long dead. Peter is so convinced that this place, this mountain top is different from any other place on earth he suggests that they make three dwellings, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, and you know already why this suggestion makes perfect sense. What else would you do when you find one of those places where God is so close that the presence of the Holy is undeniable – what else would you do but try to capture it somehow, make it permanent, build some kind of structure so that you could come back and invite others to join you there? Presbyterians know what that’s about. So many know that one of the 7 pillars of the Presbyterian faith is to make a pilgrimage to Montreat, North Carolina where the mountains are majestic and you can’t throw a stone without hitting a retired Presbyterian minister. Our friend Dr. Jamie Dale who preached last Sunday, he and his wife live there now and anyone whose been can understand why they would want to retire there. There are certain places that have a powerful effect on you and I believe that Montreat, North Carolina is one of those places, but here’s the thing – it’s different up on the mountain top, so what happens when you come back down? “On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain” – “a man from the crowd shouted [to Jesus], “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son… I begged your disciples to cast [the daemon] out, but they could not.” Now some may say that calling on those disciples to cast out a daemon is too much to ask of the followers of Jesus. They are not the Son of God but only his followers you might rightly say, but if you go to the beginning of chapter 9 in the Gospel of Luke you’ll see that “Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal” and that’s exactly what they did. So the question is – why weren’t they able to do so after coming down from the mountain top? The Bible doesn’t give a clear answer, but we can all imagine that everyone there was thinking how most people think – that some places are different from others, that there are mountain tops and there are valleys below and if you want to see the Holy Man of God you had better start climbing because he’s way up there. You’ve seen it before – it’s even in the Campbell’s Soup Commercials – the wisest and holiest is up there on top of a mountain, isolated from the world in a state of deepest prayer and if you seek to benefit from his enlightenment you must make the pilgrimage up the mountain top. It’s there in the Psalms as well. “I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence commeth my help?” But from that Holy Mountain, Jesus came down. Where does that leave the mountain top? Where does that leave the valley bellow? Christianity is a religion unlike any other, more life giving than any other I believe, because in the Lord Jesus Christ is the Glory of God, and where was this incarnate Glory determined to be – not high up on a mountain – but among you and me. Of course the mountain is a special place in this Scripture Lesson – Moses was there, Elijah was there, the voice of God was heard by these disciples, but the greater point is this – while some would witness God up on that mountain top and go up there to see him, they will all have wasted their effort for in Jesus Christ we know that God has been all the while seeking us. That mixes things up a little bit, does it not? All at once the special place isn’t so special and the average place isn’t so average. It’s something like how you used to only wear pj’s in bed but now you can wear them to Walmart, but in reality it’s not like that at all because what we are witnessing is the reality that the pew you are sitting in may well be a particular place but God is also working on you when you are in the Lazy Boy in your living room. I think of this chair over here – this incredible throne you’ve given me to sit in as though I were something more than a young man still struggling to see the truth – you might think that with a chair that special that sitting in it I would come closer to knowing who God is and how God is at work, but let me say it again – he may have been up on that mountain once, but the next day he came down. So I have seen him. But I didn’t have to climb a mountain looking for him – he came down a mountain looking for me. I was just settling in on Tuesday morning – and who walks in? A woman I’ve never seen, never met, didn’t know, and she tells me that she’s a nurse practitioner here to take care of Melvin Taylor. I don’t know what to call it besides a miracle. That’s what it is, and it’s not the first time. I was a chaplain intern at the Metro State Women’s Prison one summer. Scared to death. Trying to amass enough courage to take the Gospel that I knew into that God forsake place, but on my first afternoon there I heard this young woman stand in sing, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” God has come down. I read a poem this week – a poem about the golden light that shines up from the creek bed. I watched a flock of birds so thick fly right over my house. Before I went to bed I kissed two little girls and I thanked God, not because I had found him, but because once again, he has come down the mountain to find me. Open your eyes and be amazed by the Glory of God. And having seen him, follow him where he leads. Amen.

When he opened it

Scripture Lessons: Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, and 8-10; Luke 4: 14-21, NT page 61 Sermon Title: When he opened it This Thursday I’ve been invited to give a lecture and a sermon at Columbia Theological Seminary where I went to school, and I’m very excited about it. I’m excited to have been asked and I’m even excited to get back on the campus of my alma-mater, which probably has a lot to do with the reality that I am one of those extremely fortunate people who is actively using the degree that he earned from the school he attended. It’s just this unfortunate reality that too few people actually get to do that. Some people have these gifts and skills that they never really get to use, so the world is full of actresses who work as waitresses, playwrights who become electricians, engineers, writers, hairdressers, and designers who have to settle into a job that pays the bills even though for them it’s just a job that pays the bills and not the vocation that they love. This is a hard thing – it must be – to force yourself to go to a job that you hate – but what’s worse is to settle into a life that you hate because your whole identity has been compromised. I’m afraid that’s what we’re doing to our new dog. We went to the pound and found this coon hound. We didn’t know at the time that she was a coon hound, and being from Atlanta we didn’t really know what it would mean to own a coon hound, that they cannot be dissuaded from their vocation, but that’s what we have – ask any of our neighbors within a two-mile radius, a coon hound is exactly what we have. She slipped out the front door yesterday and I chased her, but she’s a lot faster than I am, and I even slipped and fell in the snow in front of Matt and Miranda Campbell and Zach and Ashley Maddux who were kind enough to help me catch her. And every time a cat walks into the neighbor’s yard you can hear her howl and you can’t make her stop. You watch her and you know that she is genetically engineered to chase that cat and as long as it’s in the yard that’s all that she can think about. Part of me wants to have her vocal cords removed. Sometimes I’m tempted to remove her vocal cords myself. But other times I watch her watching that cat, and I just feel sorry for her. How frustrating it must be to never get to do the thing you were born to do. But, though we are called to be a royal priesthood, holy and set apart, so often we are like our coon hound - stuck inside just looking out the window. In reading our second scripture lesson, this passage from the Gospel of Luke, I know that the Lord refused anything but his true calling – that our Lord was born to do something – he was meant to do something – and by the grace of God he is choosing to do it in this 4th chapter. He returned to Nazareth – this small town “where he had been brought up” – and while he was in the synagogue there he stood up to read, and I can just imagine that when he took the scroll it was one of those moments where those who were present knew that they were witnessing something significant. Then he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To let the oppressed go free, To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and with the eyes of everyone there fixed on him he told them: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He’s saying: This is who I am, this is what I was born to do and now I am ready to do it. It’s a significant moment. Think about the first time Mozart saw a piano, or when Henry Ford took apart a bicycle to make his first automobile – these must be something of a glimmer of what it was to witness Jesus claiming his ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth. It’s in this moment, when Jesus takes the scroll, that it becomes real. Jesus becomes the person that he was born to be, and according to Dr. Fred Craddock, “this event announces who Jesus is, of what his ministry consists,” and “what his church will be and do.” To me, the unfortunate reality is that we, the Church, in many ways we are more like the actress who’s making a living as a waitress because we’ve given up our true purpose for something that appears to be more realistic. We were created to make a difference in this world, but rather than actually doing it we are stuck inside watching it happen on the news – rather than being active agents of change we have been lulled to sleep. Of course there was a time when the frontier was expanding and churches were popping up from here to the Pacific. The Seminaries were following close behind to provide the pastors for those churches, but as times changed, one by one those seminaries closed up. And it’s not bad – even though so many have closed there’s still plenty – because the seminaries that remain can still produce more than enough pastors because the churches have started closing up too. It appears to many that the Church is becoming this dated institution that has gone the way of the mule drawn carriage and the pay phone – so in an effort to fight the trend I’ve seen the Church try to remain relevant. Now there’s a dangerous word. To be a relevant church – well – if you’re a relevant church and the people say they don’t need the religion of their parent’s or their grandparent’s than you go and give them the religion that makes sense to them. It’s not altogether a bad idea. As society changes, in many ways the Church has to change with it. Back when my mother was a child she sat right in that pew and if she squirmed my grandmother would pinch her in that soft skin on the underside of her arm. Some would say that this is what parents need to do now, but we’re a little more relevant than that. Susie Baxter provides our children with these wonderful coloring books and crayons and nobody has to get pinched... hopefully. I think that’s fine. That’s the good side of being relevant. You change a little bit. You get creative. You see old problems with new eyes and come up with something better. But I fear that in other ways being relevant hasn’t been so good for the church. Consider the first line of Jesus’ mission statement: “Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” If that’s his call, if that’s what he did – and we know that he did – than has the Church lived up to such a calling? In so many ways I know that we do, but in other ways I’m not so sure. In fact, I believe that the Church in the United States has changed her focus just a little bit so that the ministry of the Christian Church in the United States and the World focuses not so much on the poor, but among the privileged, the pious, and the powerful. We want to be relevant. We’re losing influence and we don’t want to lose any more, but just because there’s a Presbyterian running for President – that doesn’t mean he’ll be representing our values – I don’t care if he can quote “Two Corinthians” or not. To represent Christ is to preach Good News to the poor, release to the captives, and to let the oppressed go free. Will any of the candidates be doing that? We can’t just settle for getting by. But too often that’s exactly what we are doing. Just trying to – make a living – hold on – pay the bills – get some shade of a Christian in the White House, but we were not born to just get by. According to legend, there was a time when the Church was so powerful that the prayers of our forefather, John Knox inspired such fear in the Queen of Scotland that she is famous for saying, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of England.” Now maybe we’re not as powerful as we used to be, but what if we tried a little harder to be true to ourselves and not so hard to just survive? What if we spent a little more time preaching good news to the poor, and not so much time just preaching? What if we spent a little more time proclaiming release to the captives and a little less time looking at them suspiciously? What if we spent a little more time praying that the blind would recover their sight, the oppressed would go free and not so much time trying to appear respectiable? What if we reclaimed our identity as followers of the one who changed the world? What if, when the scriptures were read, the people wept for joy – for by our actions these words were fulfilled? Ralph Waldo Emerson is one who might call us away from the work that we’re doing and to our true calling. Dawn Taylor reminded me and everyone else of Facebook that he said, “The purpose of life is not [just] to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” We were created for a higher purpose and a greater calling – so do not settle. Live with purpose and know what it means to live the life that God created you for. Amen.

When the wine gave out

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 62: 1-5, Song of Solomon 8: 6-7, and John 2: 1-11, NT page 93 Sermon Title: When the wine gave out Weddings. You plan and you plan, but something always seems to go wrong. There’s a great story of a Maury County wedding – the groom and his father walk out from the front, but during their processional they somehow trip and fall into the baptismal font. “I guess they got a two for one deal – married and baptized in the same ceremony,” someone said last Wednesday night at Bible study. I’m proud to be a part of weddings. I’m proud to have been a part of some of your weddings, but our own, when I was the groom I only had one job – to secure a soloist. A friend offered to sing at our wedding and I took him up on it which took care of that, but I never thought to ask whether or not he could sing, so the first time I heard him sing was when Sara and I were up there, just having made our vows and he was so bad that my cousin asked if I had asked him to sing that badly on purpose to get a few laughs, and I had not. Weddings. I get to stand right up front next to the groom as the bride walks down the aisle. It’s my job to catch him if he decides to run, and I’m thankful that I’ve never had to do so, which bodes well for not just the wedding but also the marriage. It’s that much harder to have a successful marriage if in high stress situations you are the kind of person who is quick to walk out. In our Scripture lesson for this morning it’s not the groom who might leave. It’s not the bride – but the guests. The wine gave out – that’s what went wrong with this wedding – and if you’ve ever been at a wedding reception when the drinks ran out than you know that this would bring an embarrassing and abrupt end to the party. According to Dr. Bill Creasy, a celebrated Bible scholar, the hosts may have planned to perfectly accommodate the guests, but this itinerant preacher, a friend of the family, he came with a whole crew of disciples with him, so why did the wine give out? John, Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, Nathaniel and the others – that’s why. Maybe knowing this to be the case Mary goes to Jesus saying, “They have no wine” and according to Dr. Creasy, she goes to him not only because it’s his guests who caused the shortage, but also, because she knows he can do something about it. Mary, the mother of Jesus goes to her son and makes a big request that masquerades as a simple observation, “They have no wine.” And Jesus, who knows his mother as well as or better than any other son, he knows what his mother is saying when she makes such an observation so he responds, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” He’s responding to her, not only telling her that he doesn’t want to do anything, nor does he feel responsible, but he’s also making a statement about how he will prioritize his time of introduction – yes He is the Son of God who can perform miracles, but not everyone needs to know that right now, “my hour has not yet come.” But despite the protest, Mary says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” “Do whatever he tells you.” With this statement our Scripture Lesson offers us two options for those occasions when the wine runs out. When the wine runs out some will know that it’s time to go and they will leave, but the servants will stay and they will “do whatever he tells” them. A theological truth is that those who leave, the Lord may just let them go. You’ve seen it played out in Scripture. That’s just how God works. In a couple months we’ll read the parable of the Prodigal Son and in this parable the father gives his son his inheritance, allows him to leave with all that money, knowing well that he may take it to squander it away on loose living which is exactly what he does. When the money ran out he was looking at these pods that he was supposed to feed to the pigs longingly, wishing he could just eat those pods himself and fall even farther down the pit of shame. In a moment like this he had the option of turning farther away – leaving again, or turning and going back. You know the rest of the story. You know that the son does go back and that the father rushes out to greet him which is surprising every time we hear it, because it’s just so hard to believe that when the wine gives out there could be something so miraculous as God’s abundance. The Lord promises rivers of flowing water – grace greater than all our sins – but we are only so bold to hope for getting by from one day to the next. Mary knows the Lord better than we do, however, and so “His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” And standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” Now did that make any sense? Not to those servants, surely. What would have made sense would have been for Jesus to tell them to run down to the liquor store to buy a few amphora of the cheap stuff, but instead he told them to get these great big water jars – more like bathtubs than anything else – and to fill them up with water and whether that made sense to any of them or not they did it which adds something to the lesson that is already developing: there are two options – to leave or to stay and “do whatever he tells you,” and whatever he tells you may not make any sense but the best advice seldom does so do it anyway. An example - I remember seeking out advice from a retired pastor who had served these great big churches. We were at a Presbytery meeting and I asked him something like, “so what’s the secret to being a pastor?” He looked me up and down and told me, “Joe, you’d be a lot better off if you’d shine your shoes.” “Shine my shoes?” I asked. “Isn’t that just a little superficial?” Then he responded, “Well maybe it is, but people are so take advantage of it.” Shine your shoes. It doesn’t have to make sense to you for it to work. You know how many men have told me that they thought Valentine’s Day was a dumb idea hatched by the greeting card and chocolate companies to drum up some business. They’re out there shaking their heads – “they’re not gunna pull one over on me!” But just because you think it’s stupid doesn’t mean that your wife does. You hear this relationship advice – go out on a date at least one night a month, never go to bed if you’re still in a fight, go to church together, sit down at the dinner table and turn off the TV – not all of this makes sense to everybody, but who cares? You may as well try something. That may have been exactly what the servants were thinking. “Do whatever he tells you,” Mary said, and so they started filling up those big wash tubs and one said to the other, “You think this is going to work?” The other servant says, “We may as well try something” – and sometimes in life that’s all it takes. They filled up those big water jars, with the faith of those willing to try anything and they ended up with wine finer than what had been served first. Of course you can’t always stay and just be obedient. Sometimes the issues are so severe the advice of any sensible person would be for you to not only leave but to run away. But you know what the ones who make it say? You ask them to explain love and sometimes you’ll hear the wives say, “No matter what, he was always there.” He was there in the good times and the bad times. For richer or poorer, In joy and in sorrow, In sickness and in health. That’s what they stand up here and promise to each other, and it sounds simple at the time, but the ones who make it to their 50th anniversary, it’s because they chose to stay. “Do whatever he tells you.” Doesn’t that sound simple? Doesn’t it sound easy? Of course it’s not. So hear again the words the choir just sang: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, As a seal upon your arm; For love is as strong as death, Passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love; neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of his house, It would be utterly scorned.” For those who honor such love, for those who stayed at that wedding even after the wine gave out, the Lord provided wine finer than the Steward served before. May it be yours as well. Amen.

In His Hand

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 43: 1-7 and Luke 3: 15-22, NT page 60 Sermon Title: In His Hand The book that had the greatest effect on my early adolescence was not the Bible, but The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and I’m not the only one. If you ask around a little bit, it seems like this book made an impact on everyone who was ever an 11-year-old boy. From the time the book was published in 1967 to now it’s as though the publisher just sent the book to your house automatically so many people have read it and remember it. The day I got it, I think it came in my Easter basket, and that Easter Sunday I started reading the book in the morning, I thought about it during church, picked it right back up after lunch and had the thing finished before I went to bed that night. It is the only book I’ve ever read in just one day, and it’s all about greasers. The main character goes by Ponyboy, and he lives with his brothers and hangs out with this gang of neighborhood kids, and they get called greasers because they wear their hair long and they use too much pomade. How they look matters. They don’t dress like the kids from the right side of town because they are not from the right side of town. They also carry switchblades and get into fights, but the main story line is watching who Ponyboy becomes. He’s one of those kids with potential, but will he do something about it? Will he grow out of being a teenage greaser who gets into a little bit of trouble from time to time or will he follow so many down this other path of holding up liquor stores and getting locked up in “the cooler” as they call it. There’s this defining moment near the end of the book where Ponyboy is talking with two of his fellow greasers, drinking a Pepsi, when a car load of the Socs drive up. The Socs are the rival group from the right side of town, and as they walk up to Ponyboy and his friends they use some threatening language, act like they’re trying to start a fight, so Ponyboy breaks the bottom off his Pepsi bottle and holds it with the sharp glass right up against this guy’s neck, and he says, “You get back into your car or you’ll get split.” Now why they fight and how they fight – those are two significant issues that the book deals with. Sometimes they fight in self-defense, but more often this gang of greasers fights for something else – honor. Somebody walks through their neighborhood and starts acting like they own the place – then the greasers have to fight to defend what’s theirs. Someone insults them and calls them trash – then the greasers have to fight for respect. And they’re always fighting the Socs – this group of upper-class teenagers who live in houses on the right side of town, have both their parents there waiting on them to come home at night. You read the book and you realize that the author gave this book just the right title, The Outsiders, because the greasers believe they are just that – outsiders – and they have to fight to keep their place in the world. Some will just fight with their fists, so there’s a difference in the book between the ones who fight with their hands and the ones who fight with chains, knives, bats, broken bottles. The ones who fight with weapons, as it seemed that Ponyboy would, they end up moving to greater levels of violence until they’re using “heaters” – the book calls them – guns. In this scene with the Pepsi bottle it seems as though Ponyboy is choosing to go down this road, walking away from his potential to follow all those neighborhood guys who are either dead or in jail because he has to defend, not just his physical self but his emotional self, his dignity, respect, and honor. But, once the Socs drive off, Ponyboy kneels down to pick up the broken glass on the ground because he didn’t want anyone to get a flat tire. What you have in your hand matters. What Ponyboy had in his hand is a sign of how he would chart his future, and that’s true in a lot of cases. He doesn’t have to tell anyone he’s going home to apologize to his wife – if he goes home holding flowers everyone knows exactly what he’s doing. We don’t even have to say that he’s asking for forgiveness – we use this expression that “he came home with his hat in his hand.” When the relatives show up for Christmas they might ring the door bell and say, “I come bearing gifts” because what you have in your hand communicates something, it means something, so when all the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answers them by telling them what the real Messiah will have in his hand. We read in verse 17 what John tells them: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” If you thought a kid with a broken bottle in his hand was a disturbing image – think about this one – a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork, as you probably know already, is like one of those wide baskets that so many still use to toss the grain – be it rice or barley, oats or wheat – you use it to toss the grain into the air just enough so that the wind carries the husk onto the floor and only the heavier grain remains in the basket. The winnowing fork – that is what it was used for too – to separate the good from the bad, and the good will go into the granary, but the bad – the bad “he will burn with unquenchable fire.” According to John the Baptist, that’s how we’ll know him – because of what he is holding in his hand, and it’s not a broken bottle that he’s using to defend himself. It’s not his hat that is in his hand, it’s a winnowing fork that he’ll use to clear his threshing floor. It’s a harsh image. It makes you wonder, “Where I’ll end up, in the granary or in the fire.” Am I wheat or am I chaff? This is a fair question when contemplating this lesson from the gospel of Luke because so much of this Scripture lesson is about identity – is John the Messiah or is he not – that’s what the people are asking – who is John? But it’s also trying to tell us who is Jesus as well as clarifying the identity of you and me. Identity. This is a lesson about identity, and you’ve heard me harp on identity before. Every Sunday I end the worship service charging all of you to remember always who you are. My friend Billy Frierson listens to the service on the radio, and without fail, when he calls to talk to me he’ll end our conversation telling me that “he’ll remember who he is,” making fun of me just a little bit because he knows already and doesn’t need to be told again. Maybe you don’t’ need to be told again either, and I hope you don’t, but I feel like I need to tell you this all the time because there are times when you’ll be prone to forget. Identity – who are you? Where are you going? That’s what Ponyboy was figuring out, but Jesus – Jesus always knew. Regardless of what the world said, Jesus always knew and that’s how he’s different from us. He knew and didn’t listen so much to what the world kept telling him about being from the wrong town, speaking with the wrong accent, and not having enough to garner any respect. Did you know that at the time of Jesus, Nazareth, where Jesus grew up after being born in Bethlehem, was a community of between 200 and 400 people? That’s it. And Nazareth was in the region of Galilee, but to go to someplace big and speak with a Galilean accent – we’ll that was the kind of label that was hard to live down. Going into one of the places where there would have been some carpentry to do, among the Romans or landed aristocracy, Jesus and his father were something like my friend Will Shelburne from Kingsport, Tennessee. I went to college with him, and he left Kingsport one summer to go up to New York City for a conference or something and the first thing they asked him when they found out where he was from was whether or not they wore shoes back home. We so often and far too often are in the position of having to prove ourselves, and the world knows this about us and so the world comes up with all this stuff – clothes that do more than keep you warm, cars that do more than get you from one place to another, neighborhoods that are more than just a place to live – and money is made, all kinds of money is made, because people like you and me want to make sure that our identity is secure. We have to fight to maintain a strong sense of who we are, and maybe we don’t ever hold a broken bottle up to anyone’s neck, but there’s more than one way to defend your sense of self-worth. Do you remember playing basketball? I was on this team and I made one shot all year for three years in a row, so at some point I realized that I just wasn’t good enough to keep playing and to preserve my pride or something I just quit, but I remember too that the first year that I played I didn’t care whether or not I was any good, I just played because it was fun. Before I let the world or the voice in my head care about so much I played just because it was fun. We have to be careful, because when our station in the world is based on how many points we score or how much money we make or what kind of relationship we’re in, defending our sense of self can take up a whole lot of time. So much time, that you might start hoping that there’s an alternative, and I believe that there is. A pastor came to visit me this week in my office. He’s a retired Lutheran pastor – he’s a really great guy and I could tell that he wished he were preaching today because he wanted to tell me all his best baptism stories. They were all powerful, and of course they were, we pastors get to witness all kinds of miracles, and he’s telling me this one story. He was taking a group of high school students to Hell’s Kitchen in New York City back in the 80’s. They stop at a McDonalds, and some of the students, at this point they are getting pretty comfortable with the neighborhood, they strike up a conversation with a homeless man sitting nearby. This pastor friend of mine goes to sit down with him too, and after a while, after all the students have wandered back to the church van, this homeless man says that he wants to show my friend something. Out from his pocket he pulls an old yellowed sheet of paper. He’s kept it in his wallet where your driver’s license would go. He unfolds it and he says to my friend, “This is who I am.” My friend reads the man’s paper, which turned out to be his certificate of baptism. Remember who you are. I tell you that every Sunday at the end of the service. I say, “I charge you now to remember always who you are,” and even though my friend Billy Frierson makes fun of me for it – I tell you this Sunday after Sunday anyway because in this world you need to remember – you need to remember your baptism because it is by the water of baptism that we really learn about identity. On the other hand, the world will look at you and judge your entire identity based on the clothes on your back, the car that you drive, the neighborhood that you live in. They’ll look you in the eye or pretend that you don’t exist based on nothing more than your appearance. Then they’ll count the money in your pocket and tell you you’re worth as much as you have or as much as you’re willing to spend. That’s why you have to remember who you are based on who God says you are. Jesus came with this winnowing fork in his hand – and with it he clears his threshing floor saving the wheat and burning the chaff and we always wonder whether we’re wheat or chaff, greaser or Socs, respectable or not, but that’s not what this is about. You see – the chaff – the chaff is the house, the car, the clothes, and everything else that you use to stand up to the Socs the way Ponyboy did with that bottle – all of that burns up to nothing sooner or later - and when it burns up, there’s only grain, or better yet, when it burns up there’s only water and when you come up from the water there are these words: “You are mine, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” You spent all this time working for it, fighting for it – but you see, the Lord has been trying to give you for free all along. Here these words again from the Prophet Isaiah: But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, he who formed you, Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Amen.