The god who answers by fire

Scripture Lesson: Galatians 1: 1-12 and 1st Kings 18: 20-39, OT page 325 Sermon Title: The god who answers by fire Preached on 5/29/2016 I was folding laundry last Friday and the only thing that makes folding laundry tolerable to me is finding something good to watch on TV while I fold. After surfing through the channels I ended up settling on Rambo 3, which means really I was unable to find anything good to watch on TV while I folded laundry. If you’re unfamiliar with the Rambo movies, the only background that you need to know is that they came out in the 1980’s and star Sylvester Stallone, and in these movies he is a one-man army, having been trained for the special forces during the Vietnam War. In Rambo 3 this idea that he is a one-man army really gets blown out of proportion as he faces this entire regiment of the Soviet Union’s military – they have tanks, a helicopter, several hundred armed men – all talking in those harsh Hollywood versions of Russian accents and all laughing in the face of Rambo who stands virtually alone, accompanied only by an injured guy who was his commanding officer back in Vietnam. The movie ends with a face-off between Rambo, who at this point has commandeered a tank, and the last surviving Soviet who is in a helicopter – one is coming from one direction the other opposite, neither backing off until they collide in a huge explosion of fire from which Rambo emerges unscathed. I tell you this because I was struck that in a very strange way, there’s actually a couple things that Rambo and our 2nd Scripture Lesson have in common. They both end in a fire – a fire that signals victory for the one man who faced an entire army. Of course the comparison ends there, especially when you think about how the battle worked in the case of Rambo. For one thing, in the case of Rambo the enemy was clear. The Soviets had invaded from the outside, and they could be fought out on a battle field. Biblically speaking, such an enemy as this would be like the Philistines who once invaded and encroached on Israel’s promised land and had to be fought in the valley of Elah where little David brought the Giant Goliath to his knees. This kind of enemy makes the best kind of movies, but the Prophets of Baal are different. Fighting them is more like how a body fights cancer, how a nation fight terrorism, or how a mother protects her child from the neighborhood around them – the enemy that the Prophet Elijah is trying to defeat has so infiltrated his own country that he is trying to save his homeland from what she has become which is different from defending it against a foreign army. The Prophets of Baal were absorbed into the culture, accepted as neighbors, and even held high office in the land for the source of this corruption was married to the King of Israel. You know what this kind of situation is like. It’s a gradual kind of invasion. Your son comes home from school on a Friday and tells you that he’s been invited over to spend the night at a friend’s house. “What about going to the synagogue the morning?” his mother asks. The son says “that his friend’s parents will take him to the temple where they worship Baal” and mom and dad say, “We’ll that’s a little different,” but they figure it’s probably good enough. After all, at work dad’s been dealing with the same kind of thing. He’s been passed up for a promotion because he insists on following that old time religion with Moses and the 10 Commandments while his co-workers who are trying out this new thing imported by Queen Jezebel are getting the nod from the king. “Sure it’s a little different”, they say “but what’s the big deal?” According to our Second Scripture Lesson the big deal is that this new religion is empty. It can’t deliver on the promises that it’s made so the Prophet Elijah stands before all the people and says, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” What Elijah is doing is not giving a lecture to guilt the people back into righteousness, but he is instead calling for a contest to prove that the gods they are turning to aren’t even real. To do so he calls for two bulls on two alters. The lone prophet, Elijah, will be calling out to his God to light the fire and roast one bull while the 450 prophets of Baal will be calling out to their god to light the other and “the god who answers by fire is indeed God.” Now I can see the genius in this scenario, but it also makes me a little bit nervous. Just the other day a friend told me that if she never applies she never has to open the rejection letter – so this scenario makes me a little bit nervous because it is a moment where everything is put on the line. However, I also know how this is going to turn out, and that’s not just because I’ve read the story a few times but because I know that there are gods who claim to answer by fire but who cannot and never will and that there is another God who promises to do so and will again and again. Most people would rather see a movie where the good guy just shoots the bad guy, but this approach that Elijah takes – just asking the question of whether or not the object of your devotion deserves your devotion is one that we can use every day because I know that there is so much in my life that doesn’t do me any good but that I continue to pay homage to without much thought. So Elijah just forces the issue: follow the real God. Follow the God that can actually deliver on his promises. Which is a thought that I’d like to bring up with everyone who isn’t at church right now but is out shopping at Walmart instead. I’d like to remind them that where your treasure is there your heart will also be – and I for one do not want to die only to wake up in Walmart instead of heaven. If ever there was a religion to compare to the worship of Baal, one that had infiltrated the hearts and minds of a nation without too much of anyone noticing, it is this religion of consumerism. The rituals of this religion are clear: you spend your way to salvation, buy yourself some happiness, and relieve your anxieties through shopping therapy. It’s been claimed that today we spend enough on diet merchandise to solve most of the world’s hunger problems, and the worst part is that those diets don’t even work. We drive the car off the lot and some get brought low by a case of buyer’s remorse or loath the payments that keep coming month after month because they thought they were buying more than a means of transportation – they thought they were buying something that could make them happy. We sign away our future on a high interest loan so we can get the stuff that everyone else has and we end up like everyone else – in debt up to our eyeballs and kept up at night by mounting payments. Could we outlaw the cult of consumerism that has invaded our entire nation? Or might it be more effective to just ask this question: “will consumerism answer with fire?” Will it supply us with what it has promised? Or will we end up with an empty wallet and a basement full of stuff that we’ll eventually throw away remembering the old saying that the two happiest days in the life of a boat owner are the day he bought it and the day he got rid of it? As much as things have changed in the 2500 years since our 2nd Scripture Lesson was written things have really stayed the same. At least two if not all of the great theologians of the 20th Century, Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr agreed that the most damaging sin facing humanity is still that of idolatry – where we expect salvation to come from places where it simply never will. And rather than turn to the only source of salvation, the living God, we continue bowing at the altar of the idols created by human hands forsaking the creator for what has been created – and the worst part of all is that while we spend our time and our money on idols we’re not even getting anything in return. No one lies on their deathbed wishing they had more stuff. No one breathes their last breath worried about the fate of the junk in their storage unit. In the last moments the regrets are always the same – I should have spent more time loving the people who I love and making a difference in this world while I had the chance – so there’s a message here from the Prophet Elijah for all of us: turn to the God who answers by fire, who can actually deliver on his promises and drop those values within our culture that just aren’t valuable. And there are so many. In our world today we’ve absorbed all this junk. We hear about forgiveness on Sunday morning but the TV shows and movies who preach a gospel of revenge have a much larger audience. Once again – there’s one prophet on one side and 450 on the other. What can the lone prophet say but ask the question: “In choosing vengeance do you get anything in return? Will vengeance answer with fire?” And in asking this simple question this holy man of God helps us to see what works and what doesn’t in a culture that has adopted so many lies as truth. Rather than bow before the God who created the human body and gave it life, we bow before the human body, join the cult of youth and beauty, adhere to the discipline of attaining acceptance and popularity, and watch as young men and young women adopt the heretical belief that it doesn’t matter so much whether you like yourself so much as whether everyone else likes you. They say: It doesn’t matter how you feel so much as how you look. It doesn’t matter what’s between your ears so much as what’s everywhere else. And I hate to think about how superficial our whole culture has become with more emphasis on youth and skin cream and the habit of looking in the mirror and seeing what’s wrong rather than what’s right, and there aren’t just 450 prophets proclaiming the gospel of superficiality – there is a corporate machine that preaches on magazine covers and commercials and bill boards so all-encompassing that some will risk their lives just to look how they think they are supposed to look. What would Elijah do? Simply ask if this cult will ever give a return on what it’s promised, and some will wait all day for beauty to equal happiness but this god will never answer by fire because you can’t get what you need until you look in the mirror and accept what you see. The prophetic battle wages – and it’s not like that of World War I where the battle field was Flanders’s Field or Lorraine all across an ocean and waged at a visible enemy. A war like the first World War has a clear battle field, a clear enemy, and even the costs of the war are more easily determined. We can just walk into the Narthex of our church to read the names of those young men who this church lost in defending our country during World War 1. On the day before Memorial Day we are mindful of all those who we’ve lost in war, but we must also be mindful of all those who we have lost and are losing because of passed down values that have no value and devotion to gods who can’t answer by fire. That’s what happened up on the mountain, and when Baal failed to light the altar Elijah mocked his prophets saying, “Cry aloud! Surely his is god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” Then the prophets cried even louder, but “there was no voice, no answer, and no response.” So also, every time we go expecting to be filled up by the approval of others, the altar remains unlit. Every time we think we can buy our way to satisfaction we can cry and shout and shout and cry until there’s nothing left but still there will be no answer. And every time we go putting our hope in human power – the politician, the pastor, the friend, or ourselves we will be left disappointed – so this must go for you just as it must go for me: My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. For each and every time we kneel before the creator. Each and every time we bow before the father. Each and every time we call out to Hosanna, Lord of All, righteous judge of the nations, shepherd to his people we will know the God who answers by fire. We have to stop being consumers and start being Christians. We have to stop obsessing about the flaws of our appearance and focus instead on his wounds which bring us life. We have to stop looking for love in all the wrong places, because there’s only one place where we’ll ever find it. “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.” Amen.

May understanding raise her voice

Scripture Lesson: Romans 5: 1-5 and Proverbs 8: 22-36, OT page 591 Sermon Title: May understanding raise her voice Preached on 5/22/16 This lesson from the book of Proverbs is appropriate for Trinity Sunday (which is today), because it’s been assumed for generations that this “wisdom” who calls and “raises her voice” in verse 1 is the third person of the Trinity or God the Holy Spirit. In this second Scripture lesson she accompanies the first person of the Trinity, God the Creator, through the great acts of creating the world, the land the sea, plant and animal life as well as human kind. So our passage reads: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, The first of his acts of long ago. When there were no depths I was brought forth, Before the mountains had been shaped” And then the Proverb goes further, detailing Wisdom’s unique role in creation: When he drew a circle on the face of the deep When he made firm the skies above When he assigned to the sea its limit So that the waters might not transgress his command When he marked out the foundations of the earth Then I was beside him, like a master worker.” This passage from Proverbs highlights the part that wisdom plays, so unlike the creation account that we are most familiar with in the book of Genesis where we read that God said let there be light and there was light, God said let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and there they were, God said let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind and so it was, here in Proverbs we read that Wisdom was brought forth when depth was assigned to the ocean and when the height of the mountains were determined – in other words, Wisdom is beside God the Creator not to bring forth creation from nothing, but to establish what is the breadth and length and height and depth, how deep should the oceans be and how high the mountains. Wisdom then, what is wisdom? According to Proverbs chapter 8, Wisdom is the voice who tells the all-powerful God to “stop right there.” When “Wisdom raises her voice” it is the voice that says, “Enough!” even to God. It’s Wisdom who is there to set the limits – to decide where things should stop, and if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were anything like a group of mere mortals than I can imagine that by so doing she quickly established herself as the least popular of the group. Wisdom’s job in creation sounds something like the job of my fraternity’s treasurer. Back in college, when I was a student at a small Presbyterian school and a member of a fraternity of about 30 people, from time to time the brothers would decide that it was time for us to have a party and to hire a band. Everyone would be excited about the idea, calling out the names of the bands they thought that I, the social chairman should contact first, but then the voice of our treasurer, Moultrie Townsend would be heard, telling us that there’s no way we could hire any of those bands because we didn’t have any money. Today his cautionary words sound reasonable enough, but back then we’d all “boo” Brother Townsend and would throw cans at him and tell him to leave the meeting because some people just don’t like limits and like even less those who are courageous enough to set them. In the words of Bible scholar Bill Brown, Wisdom baby proofs God’s creation. She establishes boundaries, creates limits, and draws the line in the sand where the waters would not transgress his command. Wisdom then, what is wisdom – according to Proverbs chapter 8, Wisdom is the voice who says: Those mountains – they are tall enough. Those seas – they are deep enough. Those oceans – they are wide enough. And those waves should go no higher. Think for a moment about how you felt as a child when the mother who told you the same kind of thing raised her voice. You were up in a tree reaching for the next branch when you heard: “Now come down from there – that’s high enough.” You were swimming in a pool in the heat of summer when you heard: “It’s time to come in from the pool – you’ve been in there long enough.” Or you were getting ready to walk out the door when you were stopped in your tracks: “Don’t you worry about what the neighbors are doing – I’m your mother and I’m telling you that your dress is short enough.” “And you’ll be home when I say – 11:00 is late enough.” Maybe you’d thank her now, but back then – back then the one who was making the rules was keeping you from the freedom that you wanted. But I imagine that now you can see that she was so wise as to know that what you thought was freedom was not freedom at all. I say that in setting the boundaries of height and depth Wisdom played her part in Creation, but she was there too speaking in God’s Law: That 6 days is enough to work, and that you must rest on the Sabbath. That in marriage, your wife or husband is enough, so don’t let your eyes be drawn to anyone else’s. And when it comes to money – be happy with what you have been given – and even take 10% of what you have been given and give that away because if you don’t stop yourself somewhere you will never be satisfied. TV makes this hard I think. Just when you think you have all the right stuff you see an advertisement for something else. Just when you think you’re looking pretty good, you see someone in a bathing suit looking just a little bit better. To all of this and more, “Enough”, she says – “enough”. Those mountains – they are tall enough. Those seas – they are deep enough. Those oceans – they are wide enough. Those waves should go no higher. And you might want to be free to take that paycheck and spend it on whatever wish that sweeps your mind, but that freedom that you call freedom will lead to bondage – the slavery of debt and bills and financial misery. The countercultural claim of our Scripture Passage from the book of Proverbs is that freedom, real freedom, comes from accepting the boundaries set by our God for life. There’s a great Fred Craddock story about this kind of wisdom. You’ve heard it before, but as Dr. Craddock said himself, if a sermon’s not worth hearing more than once you have to wonder if it was even worth hearing once, so remember this story again – Dr. Craddock was in a Waffle House, and Waffle House he says is a good place to get a BLT. You have to take a shower after, but it’s a good place to get a BLT. Once Dr. Craddock was in the Waffle House and he ordered from the waitress a cup of coffee. She sat the cup down on his table. Then, “Creamer?” she asked him. “Yes, two please,” he responded, and she proceeded to pat down her Waffle House apron looking for the creamer in her various pockets and he heard her say, “I can never find anything in this capricious apron.” “Capricious?” he asked. Then he asked, “Are you a waitress or a philosopher?” not having expected to hear such a word out of her mouth. She set down 5 creamers on the table. Dr. Craddock took 2 and pushed the three back to her but she slid the three back to him saying, “Better to have and not need than to need and not have.” Knowing now who he was dealing with, Dr. Craddock responded by saying, “Maybe, but true freedom comes in having what you need and being willing to give the rest away.” Then he slid the three creamers back to his waitress knowing he had triumphed in this philosophical contest, and I remember this story with you today knowing also that by doing so Dr. Craddock embodies the essence of wisdom. Wisdom is different from intelligence, because intelligence means knowing what to say, but wisdom is knowing that you shouldn’t always say it. Wisdom is different from power, because power means being able to, but wisdom is knowing when you should. And Wisdom is different from what we call freedom, because we think freedom is being able to do whatever we want but Wisdom says that doing whatever you want whenever you feel like it will result in bondage. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Just because the mountains could be higher doesn’t mean they should be. Just because the sea could be deeper doesn’t mean it should be. Just because you can afford it doesn’t mean that you should have it. And just because you have the chance doesn’t mean you should take it. Wisdom is knowing when to stop, and I imagine that there was a time when we didn’t need quite as much wisdom as we need today because the lines were once drawn for us. We were at Miss Mary Bobo’s on Monday. Frank Bellamy drove a bus load of Presbyterians over there and the problem with a place like that is that once you’ve emptied out the fried okra bowl it comes back again full. Now self-control is nothing in the face of okra that good. But something else was true that I haven’t thought of in a long time. At the table there at Miss Mary Bobo’s we talked. We talked and laughed and talked and laughed and it reminded me of a limit my mother put on my life. That when we sat down at the dinner table and the phone rang, no one dared stand up to answer it. Today we have technology and access to each other that we’ve never had before. It’s as though the mountain keeps on growing, the sea keeps on getting deeper, our ability and our temptation is outstretching our wisdom and we must all get better at knowing when to say when. We need some rules. If we want family, community, trust, we need some rules. Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? She does, so listen. Listen to the one who took a table and made it sacred – so enough with the interuptions. Listen to the one who commands that you rest on the 7th day, that 6 days of work is enough. Listen to the one who calls you to give away 10% of what you’ve earned, because 90% is enough. Listen to the one who tells you to stop looking, who puts “coveting” what your neighbor has on the same list with murder because always wanting more will suck the life right out of you. Listen to the one who wants to keep you safe for “happy are those who keep her ways. Who hear instruction and are wise.” “Whoever finds her finds life.” Amen.

Advoating customs that are not lawful

Scripture Lessons: John 14: 23-29 and Acts 16: 16-31, NT page 136 Sermon Title: Advocating customs that are not lawful Preached on: 5/8/16 Today is Mother’s Day and Mother’s Day reminds me that sometimes God’s greatest gifts are those that require us to change. That a child can turn your life upside down, but really, in doing so, a child turns things right side up. Mother’s often embody the ability to change then, and not everyone always does. Some of us are even resistant to it. As a 200-year-old church it’s good for us to remember that change can be good every once in a while, but we haven’t always felt that way about change. When there were finally enough Methodists to call themselves a congregation they went to the Session of our church asking permission to use our sanctuary for worship. Now think about how many people walk across 7th Street as though they were just going over to their neighbor’s house today. Think about how many friends we all have over there right across the street. Think about how the greatest obstacle for us in worshiping with all the saints at First Methodist Church is remembering to say “forgive us our trespasses” rather than “forgive us our debts” during the Lord’s prayer. Just think about all of that and listen to this: 200 years ago when that band of Methodists requested the use of the Presbyterian’s sanctuary the Session voted and denied the request. Is that not incredible? I’m all for beating them in softball, but denying their request to use our sanctuary seems a little cold, a little resistant, and when you think about it, how we partner to serve this downtown, work side by side at the People’s Table serving meals to the hungry, worship together as one body during Holy Week, not to mention all the friendships that connect our two churches today it seems strange to think that there’d ever be a reason to forbid the Methodists from using our sanctuary, but to understand the session’s decision you have to get into the mind of the 19th Century Presbyterian. The Presbyterians of the early 1800’s had three big problems with Methodism and wanted to resist the changes they might have brought us. One was the way they worshiped. Thinking of how the Methodists worshiped, what was strange about the Methodists back then was that the Presbyterians were still singing an awful lot of hymns out of the psalter (that’s what you call the book of Psalms in the Old Testament when you use it as your hymnal) but the Methodists were famous for writing their own hymns. To write your own hymns as John Wesley and his brother Charles, two of the founders of the Methodist Church were doing, well, that didn’t make any sense to the Presbyterians. If the hymn wasn’t in the Bible it was a little radical to sing it, and if it made you too excited when you sang, well that was just plain dangerous. Now some might say that’s still our problem. Every once in a while someone will come up to me to talk about my hymn selections and he’ll say, “Joe, the hymns today made me feel like I was at a funeral,” and if he had said that to a Presbyterian minister 200 years ago the pastor might have thanked him for the compliment. Back in those days the Methodists were considered emotional – but on this side of the street, we were stayed, reverent, cerebral. Back in those days the Methodists were signing new songs just written – but on this side of the street we were still singing the psalms right out of the Bible. And back in those days – now this is getting to the second problem our Session probably had with those Methodists who wanted to use our sanctuary – back in those days the Methodists were called Methodists because John Wesley claimed that there was a method to salvation, that you could position yourself through confessing your sins, repenting and changing your ways, and by dedicating yourself to prayer, Bible study, and worship – by doing these things or subscribing to this method, you could position yourself to receive the grace that only God can give. Now that doesn’t sound so radical, but let me tell you what was going on over on our side of the street – we were subscribing to this doctrine of election also known as predestination which held that there was nothing that you or I could do to receive the grace of God because it’s all up to God and whether God decides to save us or not. To say that there was a method to salvation, that there was a discipline that you could observe to receive it, now that just didn’t work for those hard shell Presbyterians because for them, and to some degree for us still today, the power of God is a force far too strong for anyone to harness with their method. The good thing about our doctrine of election which can seem so antiquated today is that it does a good job of capturing part of how our God works because it claims that our God is like the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts – it’s not something that you can control and it might not be something that you’d ever ask for – it’s like the hand of God that reaches down to make poor old Saul blind as he’s walking down the road minding his own business. It’s like the voice that calls Peter to go see Cornelius and leads him to challenge the very foundations of the Church. It’s like the wind of Pentecost that blows where it will and filled up all the Apostles leading them to speak in languages they had never spoken in before – it’s not in our control – it’s not ours to harness – it’s far too powerful to be bridled by any method. Again and again in the book of Acts, that’s the message. Last Sunday I preached from Acts chapter 1, the Sunday before it was Acts chapter 11, today it’s Acts chapter 16 we’ll continue in the book of Acts next Sunday as well, and the thing to know about the book of Acts that is not immediately apparent is that while there are plenty of human actors in the drama of the early church that is recorded in the book of Acts, without a doubt, the primary actor and the main character is the Holy Spirit who is often at work despite their very best intentions. So our Second Scripture Lesson begins this way: “One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we me a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” Now – there are many Fruits of the Spirit, many qualities that Christians should embody, but being annoyed is not one of them. Nonetheless, it is Paul’s annoyance that prompts this exorcism. It is because this woman is driving him crazy that he casts out the daemon, and “when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.” Next, they were brought before the magistrates of the city, accused of “disturbing the city” and “advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe,” they were attacked by the crowd, stripped of their clothing, beaten with rods, and finally thrown into prison, the innermost cell and fastened by the feet in stocks, and surely if I were Paul I would be thinking that this poor, annoying slave woman was hardly worth the trouble, but I’m not sure that’s how those early Christians thought. What keeps happening in the book of Acts is that the Holy Spirit keeps on interrupting the lives of the disciples. Paul – in his prior life as Saul, was a well-positioned Pharisee, but then the Holy Spirit came along, struck him blind and made him a disciple of Jesus Christ. Then he was on his way to someplace else when a vision of a man of Macedonia came to Paul in the night and Paul had to change course. Not long after that he’s walking along on his way to do something he probably thought was going to be productive when a slave-girl won’t leave him alone, so he casts out the demon within her and ends up locked up in prison – now a typical person would say that poor Paul needs to get his life back on track, but according to the narrative of the book of Acts it’s only now that Paul is finally positioned to actually do something constructive. Hardly discouraged, from the innermost cell Paul and his companion Silas sing, and as they sing an earthquake shakes the foundation of the prison, the prison doors were opened, everyone’s chains were unfastened, knowing that he had completely failed in accomplishing his charge the jailer prepares to hill himself – and here we see that in fact, Paul was perfectly positioned to save this man. Perfectly positioned to preach the Gospel to the one who needed to hear it. Perfectly positioned to do the will of God. Is there a lesson then for us in all of this? In a sense there is, but it’s not really a moral imperative so much as it is a call to reframe life’s many interruptions, challenges, and disappointments. Think about the person who set off the chain of events that led to this last conversion of the jailer and his household – it was the person who annoyed Paul the most. And what led to his conversion? It was the moment of his deepest shame, his biggest failure in life – the time when every prisoner in the jail could have escaped! So here is the lesson of Acts Chapter 16 and really the whole book – there is a more powerful force at work in our lives that is leading us to see that the annoying person who we would love to never deal with again is actually the hero who can make our life truly interesting. That when locked in the innermost cell God may be positioning us to preach the good news to the one who needs to hear it. But most of all – the slave owners who saw that their hope of making money was gone and the magistrates who said that “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe,” in saying so they got it exactly right, because what the Holy Spirit does is shakes life up so much that change starts to come. And that brings me to the third reason the Session of First Presbyterian Church may not have wanted those Methodists using our sanctuary – in the 1800’s it still wasn’t clear if Methodists were for slavery or against it and to harbor Methodists who might have been abolitionists in those days, well, that would have been a little too disturbing, and the Session may have been thinking that those Methodists very well may have tried to advocate customs that are not lawful to adopt or observe. Now that may not have been the reasoning at all – it might have had much more to do with the hymns, and still today I’m suspicious of any hymn with a tune that’s a little too catchy, but what still rings true is this: there are plenty of us who would rather keep things just as they are than advocate customs that are not lawful – but what if the Holy Spirit is disrupting our routines for a reason? What if our God is working in the one who annoys us the most because only we can set her free? What if our God is positing us in the most uncomfortable place because it is there that our voice needs to be heard? What if our God is calling us to question the customs, to advocate for a new law and a new way? If that were the case, it would not be the first time. Amen.

Why do you stand looking?

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Acts 1: 1-11 Sermon Title: “Why do you stand looking?” Preached on 5/8/16 I love what the angels say here: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” This question that they ask the disciples of Jesus who have just watched their Lord ascend into heaven reminds me of the saying that some Christians are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good. These disciples got caught looking, not up at Jesus, but up at the place where Jesus no longer was. Now that’s a common problem I believe, because all the time people are expecting things to be there that are gone. Hoping things to be like they used to be when they’re not. We have the problem of living in an ever changing world, but sometimes what makes the change even harder is pretending that everything is still the same. I remember well one-night driving to Charleston, SC. It was before the days of cell phones, so when the transmission went out the first thing I did after pulling over to the side of the interstate was I turned the car off and then turned it on again thinking that maybe it had fixed itself. Well, it didn’t. Next, I just sat in the car for a while. Stared at the dashboard for who knows how long, tried starting the car one more time before finally something told me that I had better get out and start walking. That’s what I did, and I walked for six miles. It wasn’t doing me any good pretending that nothing had changed because it had and pretending that nothing has changed when it has is something like wearing clothes that fit a body that we no longer have. And like a man in the suit that used to fit but now is too snug in all the wrong places, some of us are guilty of looking at a person who has changed, but still expect him to fit in the clothes he used to wear – we can’t see the person who is there now because we keep expecting to see the person who used to be there. Sometimes that’s what I do to my grandfather. He has dementia and he’s nearly deaf, but he still looks the same as he did before, he even smells the same as he did before, so sometimes I talk to him expecting him to be the person he was before even though my grandfather has changed. It’s hard to reconcile the reality of aging, so some children aren’t children anymore but they still act like their parents are the same people they have always been so when they need help moving they call daddy and when they go back home they expect mama to cook a big dinner even though daddy is feeble and mama is forgetful – and change can be awful but pretending that nothing has changed makes it even worse. These disciples got caught looking up at the place where Jesus no longer was, and there’s plenty to be sad about here, but sometimes getting stuck in denial can be even worse. Christians do that kind of thing to the Church. Someone new joins the church and we’re surprised that they come once a month or once a quarter, or a new year comes for Sunday School and it seems like this is going to be the year when things get back to normal, but what if the old normal is gone? The Church is changing. The Presbyterian Church as a denomination is changing. And if we only look for signs of Jesus in all the places where he used to be than we may not see him. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” What are you doing looking up into the clouds? Just because Jesus used to be there doesn’t mean he’ll be there still. Now Scripture prepares us for this phenomenon. The prophet Elijah went out to stand on the mountain before the Lord at Horeb. There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. In the book of 1st Kings it is important to know that God had been present in all three – wind, earthquake, and fire, but this time – “after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” If Elijah had only looked for God in the places God had been before he would have missed the place where God was appearing now. So what if we are looking up at the place where Jesus no longer is? If we are like the disciples, like the Men of Galilee, caught looking up toward heaven, will we not miss the place where Jesus is appearing now? It’s happened before, and it’s a dangerous thing. It can be the stuff of a crisis of faith. I have a friend, a pianist, and for him, for years, to feel God’s presence all he had to do was sit down at a piano. After a bad day, to gain a little dose of hope all he had to do was let his finger dance across the keys, so to no longer feel anything when he sat down on the bench caused a crisis in faith because he kept going back to the piano expecting to feel the way he used to feel, but the God who was in the wind became the God who was in the earthquake; the God who was in the earthquake became the God who was in fire; but to go back to the fire just because God had been there before wouldn’t have done Elijah any good because now God was in the silence. This friend of mine found God again, but the first thing he had to do was start looking somewhere beyond the piano. In the same way, to face again our life here on earth – the reality that cancer breaks down the human frame, that jobs get downsized and the plans we engineer in our heads hit roadblocks, the reality that there are more Presbyterian Churches on life support than there are churches growing – all and any of these new realities can bring me low because I keep on expecting to find Jesus in all the places I’ve seen him before and he’s just not always there – but does that mean he’s gone? Or does that mean I’m caught looking up toward heaven rather than trusting in the one who said, “I will be with you, even till the end of the age.” The Lord may not be where we saw him last – but that hardly means he’s gone. Hear again the rest of what the angels had to say: “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” That he ascends, this is the sign that he will return. And that reminds me of a story I was told this week. Mrs. Patty Ridley remembers being a young girl at home with her pregnant mother on their farm in Montana. You might not know that while Ms. Patty is so active and full of life, she has the memories of a person from another generation because she grew up in this remote area without electricity, phones, or doctors close by. In this particular memory Patty was young, her pregnant mother knew that the baby was coming but with her husband out in the pasture with the sheep she needed someone to drive her to the hospital but he wasn’t within shouting distance. There was no way to call him and Patty was too little to go fetch him so Patty’s grandmother was the one to go. Young Patty stood looking out the window as her grandmother walked down this six-mile driveway to find her daddy and she remembers her laboring mother saying, “Is she out of sight yet?” “Is she out of sight yet?” In this case, being out of sight was a good thing, because the farther out of sight she got the closer her father would be to coming home. And with Jesus, being out of sight is also a good thing, because as he rises into heaven he rises to rule over all the earth. We must be reminded from those words of our 1st Scripture Lesson from the book of Ephesians and see not with human sight, but with the eyes of our hearts enlightened. So don’t you see – yes he ascended into heaven – and the disciples just stood looking at the clouds – but consider this – what if the Apostle Paul is right in saying that our present sufferings are nothing compared to the glory that is to come? I am convinced that sometimes we can’t acknowledge what’s changed because to do so just hurts so bad. It’s so easy to pretend that it doesn’t hurt because the hurt hurts so bad. It’s so hard to admit that he’s gone, because without what was the world seems so empty. It’s not unlike so many in our culture, to be numb to the change is better than pain of acknowledging it, but if we fear present suffering are we not more masochists than Christians? Are we like the Israelites in the desert, afraid of turning back to Egypt but unwilling to step into the Promised Land? Are we Mrs. Habersham of Great Expectations, forever entombed in that wedding dress for the wedding that never happened? Are we like the child of C.S. Lewis’ imagination, choosing mud pies in the alley way, not yet ready to accept an invitation to the seashore? Something has changed. Or better yet, everything has changed and is changing, and the sooner we can acknowledge it the sooner we’ll be able to hear completely what those angels said: “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” And when he comes again, he shall be clothed in glory. Do not get caught staring up into heaven, for having ascended into heaven he is nearer now than before. Amen.

What God has made clean

Scripture Lesson: Acts 11: 1-18, page 130 Sermon Title: What God has made clean Preached on 4/24/2016 I could make the statement that we live in a small world, but statements don’t always have the impact of a good story, so let me share with you a story. On Tuesday I went to the bank – and there I ran into long time member of First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Herald Pryor. Now that’s not the story. You already know that we live in a small town where you run into people you know in the bank. The point I want to make is that this is a small world, so here’s the rest of the story. Dr. Pryor asked me where I was last Sunday since there was a substitute preacher. I told him that the Session was gracious enough to want me to have a Sunday off, so I was able to go with my family to spend the weekend at Fall Creek Falls in the Cumberland Mountains. Dr. Pryor then shared with me this story: he was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany after World War II and was given a two week leave and he took the opportunity to travel to Switzerland. There he was taken aback by the majesty of the Swiss Alps, staying in a little hotel in Luceren (Lou-seern) called “The Beautiful Scenery” (that’s the English translation). Once, during his two week stay he had a table in the dining room and was there for the evening meal in his army uniform. Since he was there by himself an elderly couple who spoke English invited him to share their table. To make conversation Dr. Pryor was talking about how beautiful the scenery was, the mountains, the lakes, the snow, and the woman said to him that “yes it was beautiful, but not quite as beautiful as the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee.” Isn’t that a wonderful story? And so you see that, yes, it is a small world, and the point is made by sharing a story – not launching into an argument, not by making a statement – and that’s important to remember because so often when we are trying to make a point we present data, accumulate facts, and should we become a little defensive in our opinions we might raise our voices to make our point, but in doing so, rather than convincing our friends and changing their mind, instead we may find that they no longer wants to be our friend. It’s true – get into a good political debate and see what happens. Challenge the taboo of talking about religion in mixed company and watch as the dinner guests excuse themselves from the table. If you make it your practice to tell people what’s on your mind you can get into trouble, but something different happens when you share a story. That’s what Peter does in the 11th Chapter of the book of Acts. “Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” It’s hard for us to understand what circumcision has to do with anything – you might think this is a private issue not to be discussed in decent company, so even though we are in the midst of a bathroom debate at the state capital it’s still hard to understand why this issue of circumcision mattered so much to the early church, but it did. It mattered who you sat with, and if you were a man and wanted to be a Christian, at this point in time the thinking was that you first had to become a Jew and that meant circumcision. Here Peter disagrees with the norm. He and the Apostle Paul both contend in the Book of Acts that we are saved by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ alone and not by the kosher food that we eat, not by any rite of purity or initiation involving the flesh, but rather than start an argument with these guys or try to make the theological point that stops them in their tracks, Peter just shares with them a story: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’” Now, I’ve read some good Bible Scholars talk in some pretty profound terms about what this means for you and for me, but I’d rather share with you another story to help explain what I believe this Scripture lesson has to say. The year after I graduated college and before I started seminary, I worked for a high-end lawn maintenance company in Atlanta. Sara and I had just gotten married. Somehow we convinced her parents that marriage was a good idea – I was after all making $7.50 cents per hour. One morning I remember distinctly. I was approaching the shop a few minutes before 7 and I noticed that the car in front of me hit a rabbit and killed it. I didn’t think much about it, pulled into my normal parking spot and started loading up the lawn mowers, weed-eaters, and edgers on the truck I was assigned to drive like I did every day, when one of the guys on my crew rode up on his bicycle with one hand on the handle bar and the other holding that dead rabbit by the back legs. Before he would help me finish loading up the truck he wanted to clean that rabbit, and somehow or another he convinced me that it would be a good use of our time to stop by his apartment on our way to our first job so he could put the rabbit in his refrigerator. I had never seen anyone clean a rabbit, but I’ve grown up removed from agrarian culture. I’d also never eaten chitlins before Ron Neal taught me how, and I didn’t know folks ate rabbit either before that guy on my crew from a rural town on the gulf side of Mexico convinced me to stop by his apartment so he could put it in his refrigerator. I guess all that happened on a Tuesday, and at the end of the day on Friday my co-worker with the rabbit invited me back to his apartment for a drink and something to eat. I was too polite to refuse, but was pleasantly surprised to see that steak tacos were on the menu and not rabbit enchiladas. I was also surprised to see that not only my coworker but five other guys from the company all lived in that little one-bedroom apartment, the same size as the one Sara and I shared back then. I was invited to sit on one of the coveted couch seats, and by the end of the afternoon we had shared so much food and so many stories that we were no longer co-workers, we were friends. Miracles happen over shared meals and shared stories. The issue that Peter was facing: one group of believers was sitting at one table, the others at another and the divide was bridged with food a story, but today it’s not just that those who are a little different sit at different tables most of the time, but even families have a hard time sitting down to eat in one place and if that’s the case, are we friends or are we co-workers? Are we individuals or are we family? What was dividing the Church in the days of Peter was this issue of circumcision – and what divides us today? Everything. The great Bible Scholar and author of that well-read translation of Scripture called the Message, Dr. Eugene Peterson, shares the story of a time when his wife Jan was invited to speak at a women’s conference. These women all longed for advice regarding their families who it seemed were all the time running in different directions. “How can we be a stronger family,” they wanted to know. Jan just gave them one challenge – sit down and eat dinner together for at least 5 meals a week – but the ladies were incredulous and told her that doing so would be impossible. Can you believe that? But it’s true. That’s where we are, and I won’t try to convince you by arguing with you because all I have to do is tell you that in Chick-fil-a there are boxes on the table and if a family can place their phones in one of those boxes without removing them for an entire meal than the restaurant staff will reward them with a free ice cream cone. Who would have ever thought that a family would be rewarded for talking to each other at the dinner table? If you thought that it was strange that Peter be chastised for eating with uncircumcised believers how much stranger is it that today children and parents are forgetting how? I suppose that what was true then is still true today – there are forces in our world that are trying to pull us apart. But if we are pulled apart, forced to sit at different tables or drawn into isolation, numbed by television, seduced by the internet, disconnected from the people right next to us, are we not easy prey for the evil one? So God calls us to remember that we must not call unclean what God has made clean – and what God has made clean is not the table where you sit all alone – but the table where you are joined by people who already are or will quickly become family. Of course – that’s a lesson we have to be taught in today’s world because we are forgetting so much about community that we should have remembered, and Susie Baxter shared with me a story of a mother who was doing just that for her children. She took them out for a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen, but they wouldn’t say thank-you, nor did they so much as acknowledge the young woman at the cash register who handed them their desert. So the mother took the blizzards from her children’s hands, threw them in the trash, and explained “that one day, if they were lucky, they would work a job like that young lady. And I would hope that people would see them. Really see them. Look them in the eye and say thank you. [She said] we are too old to move through our days without exercising manners and basic human decency.” God calls us to relationships, because it’s relationships that matter, and to finish making my point let me share with you the rest of Dr. Pryor’s story: Through the course of his dinner in that Swiss hotel, Dr. Pryor learned that the English couple had three daughters, and that one had married a high ranking officer in Hitler’s military. They had given grandchildren to the elderly couple, and they asked Dr. Pryor to try and deliver a letter to this daughter married to the officer because while they longed to know how she and her family were, the infrastructure of much of Europe had crumbled during the war and they had been unable to make any contact. Dr. Pryor was diligent in tracking the couple’s daughter down, and as an officer in the army himself, he discovered where this German officer had been stationed, but on locating the town, he also learned that the place had been bombed to the ground and that the daughter and her family had likely not survived. But that’s not where the story ends. Several years later the details began to fade in Dr. Pryor’s memory. He told his wife that he knew something interesting had happened during his stay in Switzerland – something with an English couple who had a daughter who was married to an officer in Hitler’s military, but you know how details can get. Well, Larue Pryor just went to the place in her room where she stored all the letters he had sent her, because all those years later, she still cared about the stories he had shared with her. Now, in our world of fragmentation and isolation where friends are few and families are scattered, where everyone knows how to form an opinion but we are forgetting how to build a relationship, be mindful that while we are well trained in the work of building up walls, it seems to me that our God is so very interested in teaching us how to build bridges. My charge to you today is a simple one: eat together, share your story, and see what happens. Amen.

Follow me

Scripture Lessons: Acts 9: 1-6 and John 21: 1-19, NT pages 115-116 Sermon Title: Follow me Preached on: April 10, 2016 I was eating lunch and eavesdropping on the table in front of me. I’m not always so nosey, but sometimes I am, and this conversation was so loud and so interesting it was hard to ignore. It was between a young man who was sitting with two young women, and the young man said to these two young women, “She called me today,” and then he paused for dramatic emphasis, and I noticed myself leaning in just a little bit even though that was totally inappropriate. Then he continued: ““She called me today asking where the divorce papers were. I told her they were in my car, and so she said, “Well, when are you going to take them to the lawyer’s office?”” Then he leaned back and crossed his arms to position himself for dramatic effect, “So I said, I’ll get them to the lawyer’s office when I get around to it.” It would have been even more nosey if I would have said something at that moment, but here’s what I would have said if I were even more nosey than I am already. I would have said to that young man, “Is that how you prioritized her when you were married? Because if that’s how you treated her I’m not sure I blame her for wanting this divorce.” I’ll come home…when I get around to it. I’ll fold the laundry…when I get around to it. I’ll take you out for dinner…when I get around to it. I’ll say I love you…when I get around to it. Now that’s no way to be, but sometimes people are that way. The problem with having a lot of time (says the man who spent his lunch hour eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation) is that you create for yourself this illusion that you have plenty of it and so you can postpone the things that you really need to do. I had a baseball coach in high school. David Dunham was his name, and from time to time he’d hear from one of his players, “You know coach, mom and dad want me to quit the team because I don’t have enough time to study,” and Coach Dunham would respond, “You do whatever your parents think you need to do, but when I was in high school I had just enough time to study because of baseball practice and baseball games. In fact, outside of baseball I only had time to study, so during the season my grades actually went up because I didn’t waste any time doing nothing.” The great preacher William Sloane Coffin said about the same thing, but used fancier words: “Death is more friend than foe. Consider only the alternative – life without death. Life without death would be interminable – literally, figuratively. We’d take days just to get out of bed, weeks to decide “what’s next?” Students would never graduate, faculty meetings and all kinds of other gatherings would go on for months. Chances are, we’d be as bored as the ancient Greek gods and up to their same mischievous tricks. Death cannot be the enemy if it’s death that brings us to life. For just as without leave-taking there can be no arrival; without growing old there can be no growing-up; without tears, no laughter; so without death there can be no living.” “Without death there can be no living.” Think about that and hear again what Jesus says to Peter: “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.” Now, why would Jesus say these things? Why would Jesus look this disciple in the eye and tell him how he would die, what life would be like in the end? What could be the point of telling Peter that in your last days “someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go?” Think for a moment about what this sounds like to you. It sounds to me like what life is now, right now, what life is now like for my grandfather. We were able to visit with him last week. Going to Charleston, SC – all the way to Charleston, SC is good for a number of reasons, but one reason it is so good to me is that I can go to my grandfather’s room at his nursing home, I can sit in the chair next to his, I can see his smiling face and I can hear his voice – but what is different now is that he is too deaf to hear mine. Not only that, while his memory is good enough to remember my face, I don’t know that he remembered my name, and when he does get up out of that chair he needs someone to help lift him, and when he walks down the hall he needs a walker to stabilize his steps, and when he gets dressed he needs someone to tighten his belt. “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” I am so thankful today that I have so many memories of my grandfather. On so many occasions he took the time to tell me that he loved me and he never hung up the phone without telling me that he was proud of me, and I say that I am thankful. For while he could. While he was able. During that time when he was fastening his own belt, he said what I needed to hear. Now here’s the message for Peter, and here’s the message for you and me – if we are lucky, we will grow old and we will stretch out our hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around us and take us where we do not wish to go, so we must quit fishing and follow Jesus. Did you notice that – did you notice that those disciples were fishing when Jesus showed up on the beach. This is the third time he appeared after rising from the dead, and after he taught them, fed them, kneeled and washed their feet, gave them his body broken and his blood for the forgiveness of their sins, and sent them out to proclaim the Good News of the Gospel to the world – what do they do but go back to the place where he found them in the first place as though nothing had happened at all – they just go back to those boats and fishing nets that he told them to drop way back in the Gospel of John chapter 1. What were they thinking? After all they had been through – all they had heard and all that they’d seen – how could they just go back to life as normal as though nothing had happened? Or maybe they said to themselves, “I’ll be a disciple, sure…just as soon as I get around to it.” You, me, none of us, have as much time as we think we have. My little girls who were just born yesterday – one can read books, they both can ride a bike without training wheels, and rarely does a week go by without someone saying, “don’t blink because they’ll be going off to college before you know it.” It just goes by so fast, so don’t say, “I’ll get them to Sunday School…just as soon as I get around to it” or you’ll be sending them off to college without any clue about who they are in the eyes of God and how they should be living. Don’t say, “Once I have a chance I’ll talk to them about growing up and what happens in parked cars and what they should stand for and what they should watch for and how they should be” or you’ll be sending them out into the world like innocent lambs in the midst of wolves. Don’t say, “I’ll visit grandpa just as soon as I have some time,” because you don’t know how much time he has, nor do you know how much time you have. And don’t say, “I’ll take some time to appreciate Dakota Hill one of these days” because the clock is ticking and Beethoven Jr. is about to move on to the next place. We just can’t go back to fishing because the sheep need to be fed, and if we really love Jesus – if we love him as Peter said he loved him – then it’s going to take waking up and doing something today because we may not have tomorrow. Without death there can be no living. So hear this: Someday you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not want to go. We are not spectators to the Gospel, but participants in it. We are not just hearers of the Good News, but preachers of it. And while we live in a consumer culture – being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not only about what you stand to gain – it is also about what you might contribute. So if you are waiting to live as his disciple, if you are waiting to feed his sheep, if you are waiting to follow him – then don’t you dare wait any longer because before long we will all be like those led where we do not want to go so follow him now. Amen.

Those who have not seen

Preached on April 3, 2016 Scripture Lessons: Acts 5: 27-32 and John 20: 24-31, NT page 115 Sermon Title: Those who have not seen Some names are easier to live down than others. Johnny Cash sings a song about a boy named Sue. Me, I went to school with a girl people called Cornbread. It’s true, and it’s awful, but kids can be mean, so this poor girl – in third grade someone caught her eating the leftover cornbread off another student’s tray in the school cafeteria and the name stuck, but not just through the rest of our third grade year, this girl was known as “Cornbread” until the year we graduated as Seniors in High School. One event – one miniscule event – that marked Tawanna Jones’ life (and at least as long as high school lasted branded her as Cornbread). The same is true of Thomas. What do you know about Thomas? Chances are, you know this one event, this one morning when the disciples told Thomas that the Lord had risen from the dead but Thomas, he doubted and the name stuck. Doubting Thomas. That’s who he is, that’s who we know him as, the name stuck and there’s nothing that he could do about it – but the thing about a nickname is that, like in the case of “Cornbread” sometimes these nicknames are meaner than they should be, but also, in the case of Thomas, there’s more to the story than what you may have heard – but to hear the rest of the story you have to do more than scratch the surface. That’s the case sometimes too. As we were driving to Charleston, SC last week we passed a place called “Hard Labor Creek.” Now there must be a good story behind that name, and when I saw the sign I wished I knew the Bob Duncan of Charleston, SC so I could ask him for the story behind the name. And not too far from Charleston is a place called Ibo’s Landing - this small place in St. Simon’s Island, GA – where I’m sure that there are plenty of people who like the name but have never had the courage to ask anyone where the name came from – that’s how a lot of people are – but once I read that the name comes from an event during the time of slave traders, when a slave ship was trying to bring her cargo to shore, but rather than walk to the shore the enslaved members of the Ibo tribe were said to have taken flight and flew right back to Africa. Now isn’t that a wonderful story. I’m sure that too many have never thought to ask and so many others were afraid to, and that’s one of the other things about a name – sometimes there’s a good story behind the name but in order to hear it you have to be brave enough to ask someone who knows. Thomas is like that. While we know one story about him very well, there are others. There are many others, but to get to those stories you have to be bold enough to go looking. Now if you look him up on the internet, you’re more likely to pull up articles about Thomas the Train, but if you dig a little deeper in the Gospel of John you’ll read that the first words that he speaks in the Gospel of John are in the 11th Chapter. A group of Jews are already plotting to stone Jesus if he returns to the region of Judea and while the other disciples advise Jesus not to go, Thomas is bold enough to say, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Based on this story we might call him Courageous Thomas because he was bold enough to follow Jesus when the other disciples were afraid, and in chapter 14 when Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself so that where I am, there you may be also.” You know these verses, because they begin nearly every funeral held in this sanctuary, but these verses are mysterious – how will we get there, where is he going, what is Jesus talking about you may have wondered. In these wonderments you are not alone, but what good is wondering if you only wonder and never get closer to an answer? In verse 5 Thomas puts our questions out in the open, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” If any here have ever longed for a man bold enough to ask for directions, here is your man – the Disciple Thomas – a man who asks questions, yes, but more precisely, a man courageous enough to ask the questions that we all want to ask, a man willing to speak openly the questions that others would only whisper, a man who is willing to boldly claim ignorance without thought to image or pretense. Does he lack faith as his nickname “Doubting Thomas” would lead us to believe? Or would a better name be something that celebrates this man who is courageous enough to ask questions that are on his mind? Maybe you know what a good quality this is. Certainly I do. The subjects that I struggled with the most throughout school were languages – Spanish in high school and college, Greek and Hebrew in Seminary, never did I show any great aptitude for translation or memorization and so embarrassed was I to not catch on to what I was supposed to be learning and what my fellow students were learning more quickly than I was that I was tempted not to ask questions for clarification when I was confused, but was often tempted to pretend that I knew what I was doing, to pretend that I understood when I didn’t, and rather than raise my hand I often chose to keep my pride and my ignorance intact. Think about what happens to people who ask questions in class – when he raises his hand the smart kids groan and roll their eyes, “Here he goes again – when is he going to get it?” The cool kids in the back of the class snicker a little bit wondering why he cares so much about learning all of a sudden. Maybe there are more students in the class who are struggling with the same question but are too afraid to ask because what I am saying here is true – it takes courage to doubt sometimes. It takes a willingness to subject yourself to some funny looks to ask a question that might make you appear dumb in front of the smart kids who already get it and that might make you seem like a loser in front of the cool kids who don’t care, but you know who will be impressed with your questions? Do you know who will be glad that you asked? The teacher. While I can imagine that Thomas would be scolded for his inability to trust his friends or that he would be lectured for his skepticism – for not just believing something he might never be able to know for sure – instead Christ enters the room and says to him, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas then speaks what is known as the strongest statement of faith recorded in the Gospels: “My Lord and my God.” Here is an important lesson – when Thomas is honest about what stands in the way of his faithfulness – when he is honest about his doubt, Christ gives him exactly what he needs to believe. Sometimes we are so different – embarrassed that we don’t know already we sometimes choose instead to pretend that we do believe when we don’t, to understand when we still have questions, or that we don’t care about the answer when we do. If that’s the case, then we hide from Christ as the other disciples were hiding. Did you notice that? While Thomas was out the other disciples were present to see Christ the first time he came in our first scripture lesson because they were too afraid to go anywhere. The door was locked and the disciples were hiding behind it, but Christ walked right in to get to them. Always Jesus is seeking us, and always some of us are hiding. The disciples who were hiding behind the locked door are found – and Thomas, who must have been tempted to hide his questions is bold enough to speak them out into the open. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Do you know what that is like? When everyone else seems to know and understand by you don’t – do you pretend to know or do you speak? Did Thomas choose to keep his pride and his ignorance intact? No – he was bold to reveal his ignorance, his humanity, and when he spoke of the faith in him that was fragile - the Lord made his faith stronger saying to Thomas: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” I wonder – do we have courage enough to do the same? Some do. Back in February Monty Williams, Assistant Coach for Oklahoma City’s professional basketball team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, spoke at his wife’s funeral after she died suddenly in a car accident. He spoke not as a man with a lot of answers so much as one with a lot of questions, but he chose to speak at the funeral nonetheless. He said, “During times like this, it’s easy to forget that because what we’ve gone through is pretty touch and it’s hard and we want an answer. We don’t always get that answer when we want it…” Still he said, “All of this will work out. As hard as this is for me and my family and for you, this will work out. I know this because I’ve seen this in my life…back in 1990, at the University of Notre Dame, I had a doctor look me in the face and say, “You’re gonna die if you keep playing basketball.” And I had testing done. Test after test, shipping me all over the place trying to find a way for me to play, and it didn’t work out. And I kept that from Ingrid [who later became my wife]. She knew I was having some tests done, but she didn’t know the severity of the situation. So, my career was over at the age of 18, and we had a press conference, and I left the press conference by myself and I went to her dorm room and I told her what happened. And the very next word out of her mouth after we probably cried a little bit, she said, “Honey, Jesus can heal your heart.” Now the lesson that I learn from that story is the same lesson that I learn from our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of John – the important thing is not whether or not you know all the answers, the important thing is whether or not you have the courage to turn to the one who does. Because we cannot comprehend cancer. Rarely, if ever, is there a good explanation for tragedy. I cannot understand heartbreak, debilitating poverty, injustice, slavery, kidnappings, human trafficking, or casual lay-offs. I don’t know why life can be so hard, death can come so fast, or illness can last forever. So what do we do? We pour out our questions, our doubts, and our struggles to the one we can be honest with when we have no way of understanding on our own. We Christians have been labeled as ignorant and afraid by the world, but we have such strong examples of faith to follow – one who in his not knowing was courageous enough to kneel before the Christ in hopes of finding an answer. If we are those who have not seen but might still believe, then let us be like Thomas – taking our questions, our humanity, our feeble minds and doubting hearts all to the Lord in prayer.