Too Light a Thing

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 49: 1-7 and Acts 2: 1-21 Sermon Title: Too Light a Thing Preached on May 23, 2021 Week before last I had an incredible opportunity. It was career day at the Marietta Center for Advanced Academics and I was one of the featured guests. Honored to have a table right beside Dr. Bob Harper and his daughter Mandy who were there to tell those kids what being a dermatologist is all about, I laid out my Greek and Hebrew Bibles and my preaching robe, prepared to inspire some 5th graders to become a pastor. Interestingly, I think that examining moles and protecting people from skin cancer made a lot more sense to most of those kids than anything I had to say. One of those kids saw my robe and thought I dressed up like Harry Potter for a living. Noticing how many kids were confused by my vocation, about half-way through the morning, Bob asked if the kids had asked me any interesting questions, and they had. “Have you really married people?” on wanted to know. “Yes, I have.” “Have you ever cried at a funeral?” Absolutely. Or the most interesting, which was asked in just the faintest whisper: “How likely is it that someone could be possessed by a daemon?” That was a hard question to answer. I told her it was very rare, though if she wanted to talk more about it, she should give me a call, and I gave her a business card, which felt like a cold response, but I’m not used to being asked that kind of question. Presbyterians don’t often talk about such things. Among the Christian denominations we’re sometimes called the frozen chosen. We don’t talk much about hell or daemons. We don’t often clap either, we rarely lift our hands in praise, we tend to be so science led and rationally minded that we leave things like exorcisms and snake handling to those who speak in tongues. I’ve heard a woman speak in tongues only once. We were both chaplains at the Metro State Women’s Prison, and the Holy Spirit fell upon her, and she began to prophecy. For me, this was an otherworldly experience. As a white, southern, college educated, Presbyterian, speaking in tongues is not in the repertoire, however, speaking in tongues is neither foreign to Scripture nor to the Christian tradition, so today we celebrate it a little bit. Today is called Pentecost Sunday, which is a lesser-known holiday. Earlier this week Sara asked me if we were going to sing more hymns nobody knows. Yes, we are. The Pentecost hymns aren’t as popular as Christmas carols but we still have to sing them. This is the second Sunday in a row where the Church celebrates a less popular holiday. Last Sunday we celebrated Ascension Sunday, the day when we consider that line from the Apostles’ Creed: “the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven,” and today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit given to the disciples not long after Jesus ascended. It’s called Pentecost and it’s worth celebrating too. Today we read in the second chapter of the book of Acts: They were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Can you imagine? That’s what today is all about. This momentous event. It’s a day worth celebrating, but that doesn’t mean it’s familiar or understood, for while there are plenty of Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, no one is making any Pentecost movies. I can imagine why that is, but our brothers and sisters in the Pentecostal Churches would love a few good Hallmark movies about Pentecost, so I’ve been kicking some ideas around. Imagine a movie with a plot like this: An old man gets his house cleaned every day by a woman who speaks only Spanish. They can’t understand each other, but then one day the Spirit comes and he can speak so that she can understand. They fall in love and live happily ever after. Or a Dad has trouble connecting with his preteen daughter. He tries to sound cool, saying things he’s heard her say to her friends, like “pop-off” and “yeet” but it doesn’t work, until the miracle happens and suddenly all her daughter hears is how much her Dad loves her. I could keep going with these movie ideas. I have more, however this is what I want to emphasize. What we’re celebrating today is not only that the disciples are suddenly able to speak in languages they didn’t know before. That’s part of it. The other part is that the crowds there could understand. In the words of Rev. Anna Traynham of Shallowford Presbyterian Church in Atlanta: the miracle isn’t that people spoke. People speak all the time. The miracle of Pentecost is that people were understanding each other. That’s truly a miracle. These disciples had been all together in one place. The Spirit came and they were all given this incredible gift, but the gift didn’t just enable them to speak in languages they’d never spoken in before. They were speaking and the crowds were understanding. It’s there in verses 5 and 6: “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” It’s not just that the disciples could speak, it’s that others were able to understand. And so I ask you, shouldn’t we spend more time thinking about Pentecost? For how many among us are capable of speaking? How many out in the world have something to say? How many puff themselves up with their proud opinions? Who get on their soap boxes and will spout off at any captive audience? Plenty will, but Pentecost is different, because the Spirit enabled these disciples to speak in a language that the nations of the world made sense of. Now, back to Career Day at our daughter’s school. As I said, there were kids there who didn’t know anything about being a preacher, and a lot of them were a little wary of me once they found out who I am and what I do, so I had some free time. Fortunately, also with me on career day at Cece’s school was Roy Vanderslice’s daughter Rebecca. Roy and his wife Joan are longtime members here. Rebecca and I were talking about her dad, who will not only invite you to ride in his Tesla, he’s also a language student. Knowing that, I showed Rebecca this app on my phone that’s helping me to learn Spanish and I suggested she get that for her Dad for Christmas or something. She told me that he wouldn’t want it, because he doesn’t really want to learn another language. He just wants to know four or five words in all the languages. When he meets someone, he wants to be able to say, “please, thank you, and nice to meet you” in the language that they speak. Can you believe how beautiful that is? That’s a slice of Pentecost. The disciples spoke in a way that each person understood. People were so honored that God would go this far to speak to them in their mother tongue that they stopped and listened. That’s the miracle of today, and it’s a miracle that matters in a world where so many keep talking while their words fall on deaf ears. How often has it been this way with you? You spoke without fully appreciating who you were speaking with. You were talking but there was no understanding. It happened once with me while I was in handcuffs. Last Sunday I alluded to having been arrested as a college student. That’s sort of true. What happened is I got in a little bit of trouble with the campus police for climbing into a condemned building on campus. Then, by the school paper I was assigned to interview one of the officers who caught me, and for the picture I asked him to put me in handcuffs. I thought it would make a neat action shot. The trouble was that he’d used the handcuffs so seldom that he didn’t have the key. After someone took the picture, for hours I was in the handcuffs as he looked around the public safety office for the key. Then he thought maybe he had left the key at home, so he drove me there in the squad car. And this was the weirdest thing. (Yes, it got even weirder). It was when we got to his house that I really learned who this man was. Every wall of his house it seemed like was covered in certificates of recognition for his public service. Every wall, certificate after certificate, “with appreciation,” “in celebration of,” “with honor and distinction.” I tried to read them all while he looked for that key, which he never found. He never found the key and eventually a locksmith had to cut the handcuffs off of me. I remember it like it was yesterday, not just being cut out of handcuffs, but that I had been writing about this man without really understanding who this man was, and it basically took a miracle for me to get it. That’s Pentecost. A holiday we need to celebrate, for how often do we fail to understand each other? How often in this world do we fail to understand what it’s like to be a police officer? I tell you our country’s lack of full understanding doesn’t stop people from talking. Some criticize the police without understanding how hard their jobs are. Far too many talk about race without any knowledge of what it still means to be black in America. Some think they know. They really think they know, so they talk but as they talk the divide gets wider because they speak without understanding. So, what does the Spirit do? It gave the disciples the words, the words that the world could understand, which is absolutely a miracle that our society needs today. Just think about what’s happening in school boards across our state. Maybe you’ve read about it. Crowds of angry parents show up to talk over each other. If you don’t say what one wants to hear he’ll shout you down without taking the time to listen. It sounds like life as usual in our world today. Meanwhile, there are little girls in our schools who are wondering how common it is to be possessed by a daemon. What Pentecost reminds us of, is that communication, real communication, requires love. That’s what happened so long ago. These disciples weren’t talking so that they could advance their own agenda. These disciples were up there trying to communicate to the world how much love God has for every one of them, and when I say every one, that’s what I mean. Salvation to the end of the earth. Only, let it start in our own homes. Celebrate Pentecost and dare to try and understand your spouse. Dare to love her well enough to really listen. Dare to lovingly speak to the police officer who is a human too. Dare to acknowledge the racism that still surrounds us. Dare to speak of love that the walls which divide our world might come tumbling down. Dare to believe that the salvation of this church is too light a thing, and that the Spirit calls us to the 800,000 out in Cobb County, half of whom have yet to understand the love of God. Be slow to speak. Be ready to listen. Work to understand. And may your words be always abounding in steadfast love. Amen.

The Next Book

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Acts 1: 1-11 Sermon Title: The Next Book Preached on May 16, 2021 Today we honor graduates of high school and college, and we have an eerily appropriate pair of Scripture Lessons for the occasion, for today is what the Church calls Ascension Sunday, when we celebrate that moment when the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and the disciples stood and watched, staring off into the sky even after he was gone from their sight. I think about those disciples today in light of what graduation means, and I think about how maybe they were realizing that for the first time they were really left all on their own. That’s a significant feeling: realizing that you’re all on your own. Some people feel that, and it makes them excited. But I doubt they were excited, maybe they were terrified. I don’t know for sure, however I imagine that what the disciples were feeling was something like what I was feeling when my Mom left me at college. That day my Mom helped me get moved in, she attended a few of the orientation meetings, and then over lunch she said, “Well, I’m about to start crying, and once I start, I’m not sure I’m going to stop, so I’m leaving. I love you so much. Bye.” Then she gave me a hug and left. I remember watching her walk away. It was an eerie feeling. She was gone, and this was back in the old days before cell phones, so she really was gone, headed back to Marietta, Georgia while I stayed in Clinton, South Carolina, left up to my own devices. Among other things, that afternoon I set up the answering machine in the dorm room. That’s about how old I am, and Jesus leaving the disciples was something like that. Maybe you’ve heard of helicopter parents, who sort of hover around even after their kids go off to school. Jesus lifted from the earth, he was airborne, Scripture tells us, but he really left, so the disciples really were back on the earth trying to figure out how to keep the Church going without him. Do you have any idea what that would have felt like? Some people don’t, though I imagine most people do, and having had that feeling several times myself I want to stay in that feeling for a moment to really think about it, and to compare the feeling those disciples must have felt with what growing up and becoming an adult is like. What I know that every parent wants is to prepare their kids for life, so that they can get along on their own. Many parents question how successful they’ve been at doing so, but parents, compare yourself to Jesus for a moment. No one can do better than Jesus at anything, and when Jesus left were the disciples really prepared? Do they seem ready? Are they anxious to spread their wings? How responsible do they really appear to be? I remember well enough how prepared I was for college. Honestly, I was not prepared much at all. Having really focused my schedule to do as little academically as possible during my last semesters of high school, on my first days of college we took a few tests as a part of freshman orientation, and I tested right into remedial English. Apparently shop and weight training weren’t the classes I should have been focusing on in High School, because this wasn’t English 101 that I tested into. I wasn’t ready for that. I tested into this class that was something like “learning English as a second language” and our professor was helping us with comma placement and when to preface a noun with “a” or “an”. In addition to my weak English skills, I had never written a check. I had never done my own laundry. I had never taken a car to the mechanic. I had never been arrested, either, but soon enough I learned more or less what that was all about. My point here is this: even the disciples don’t seem particularly prepared. Jesus leaves, and they don’t know what to do without him. They’re just standing there looking up at the sky, and so parents, you have to say to yourself in these last few weeks before your chicks leave the nest, “If Jesus couldn’t get the disciples ready for life on their own, I need to cut myself some slack.” It’s impossible to completely prepare a person for independence, because there are some things in life that you won’t ever learn how to do until you have to do them on your own. Do you know the hymn, Jesus Walked this Lonesome Valley? It goes like this: Jesus walked this lonesome valley; He had to walk it by himself. Oh, nobody else could walk it for him; He had to walk it by himself. And then it goes: You must go and stand your trial; You have to stand it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can stand it for you; You have to stand it by yourself. That’s right. And in doing so you’ll find the strength that you didn’t know you had. You’ll learn to rely on a power that you never knew was there. You’ll begin to walk on your own. You’ll run, without waiting for someone else to lead the way. Once Jesus ascends into heaven, the final lesson can be taught and the final preparation is complete, because the disciples are now having to do what Jesus had been doing for them. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tells his version of this same story in one of his sermons. He was in Birmingham, which you might know, was such a violent place during the Civil Right Movement that some folks called it Bombingham. Dr. King’s life was threatened. He was in danger, and he couldn’t sleep. The thought of that brick which had been thrown through a window of the house he was staying in kept him up. He knew that not only was his life at risk, but that of his wife and children as well, who were staying in the house with him. Sleep alluding him, he went into the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee, and there he thought about how much he wanted to talk with his father, who was miles away back home in Atlanta. He couldn’t depend on his father for comfort in this moment because his father was too far away, but in this moment in realizing how far away his father was he bowed his head in prayer and he asked God for help, and he felt as though he was possibly doing this for the first time all on his own. Now I don’t think that Dr. King meant this is the first time he had ever prayed. I feel sure that he had prayed plenty of times before, but you don’t know that you’ve been leaning on your parent’s faith or your grandparent’s faith until you’re bowing your head before almighty God in a state of deep, personal need. The old preachers used to say that God has plenty of children, but he doesn’t have any grandchildren, because just being related to someone who has faith isn’t enough. You can’t inherit faith, you have to have your own, and so being in the proximity of the miracle worker isn’t enough to prepare the disciples for what they must do. Being the son or daughter of a preacher, Sunday School teacher, or a missionary isn’t enough. Life doesn’t always care who you’re related to. Your bloodline isn’t going to get you into the Kingdom of God, you’ve got to walk that lonesome valley on your own. You’ve got to walk it by yourself. Nobody else can walk it for you. Nobody else can study for you. Nobody else can take the test for you, either. Think about what’s happened when parents have tried. You’ve heard about the testing scandals. Our girls have been watching Full House reruns, and all I can think about when I see Aunt Becky is how she helped her kids cheat on the SAT. Come on Aunt Becky. You can’t do that, because not only will they get caught, but you’re also preparing them to fail at life. Now listen, I’ve had a lot of growing up to do. There was a time when I absolutely could not force myself to maintain my automobile. I was 21 years old and thought I was too busy to get the car fixed, especially because I had to get together with my friends from college for the weekend in Charleston. I left late at night, and somewhere in-between Columbia and Charleston the transmission started smoking. It was late, I was in the middle of nowhere, and the car quit on me. It just gave out. I made it to the shoulder and cut the engine, then tried to crank it again hoping it had reset or something. It hadn’t. What do you do next? This was in those days before there were cell phones, it was dark out, my car broke down, and I had on cowboy boots. What do you do in a situation like that one? You start walking. Because nobody else is walking for you. After four miles I made it to an exit that had a pay phone. I called a wreaker and asked the dispatcher if the wreaker could pick me up at the exit before picking up the car. She said, “Sir, it’s a tow truck, not a taxicab.” I’ll remember that line for the rest of my life. But I learned that lesson the hard way, because sometimes that’s the only way thick headed people ever learn. Didn’t Jesus tell them what they should do? Didn’t he? Hadn’t he already told Peter? Hadn’t he already taught Thomas? Hadn’t he already showed them all? But the only way they’re going to do it on their own is if he leaves them behind. Now, I don’t think Jesus wanted to leave them any more than my mother wanted to leave me at college, but she loved me too much not to help me learn that most important lesson, and in leaving me one chapter of my life came to an end. Just when that chapter ended, another one began. That’s maybe the most important thing to remember: the main character, the one everyone else depended on, leaves but the story keeps going. Our Second Scripture Lesson began: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught.” You might know that the author of the book of Acts is also the author of the Gospel of Luke. In the first book the author wrote to his friend, Theophilus, to tell him “all that Jesus did and taught.” Acts is the next book, and just because Jesus leaves, that doesn’t mean the story ends. It means a new chapter is beginning. For many of you, this month is full of celebrations to mark the end of the first book. In the midst of all that celebration, give thanks to God and be ready for the beginning of the next one, where you are the main character. And as this next book begins, don’t be afraid. Keep walking. And remember always who you are and remember always who is with you, even if you can’t see Him. You are God’s own with a new story to write.

There's a Difference Between Watching and Doing

Scripture Lessons: Deuteronomy 30: 11-20 and 1st John 5: 1-6 Sermon Title: There’s a Difference Between Watching and Doing Preached on May 9, 2021 Our Second Scripture Lesson is a good one for today, with today being Mother’s Day, because the focus of the passage I just read is love. That sounds nice. Love is nice, but as every Mother in here knows, love isn’t just nice. When I think of love I think, not only of a mother’s love portrayed in a Publix commercial. I don’t just think about a warm dinner or a cup of coco. I think about this one afternoon when Cece was a baby. She was in a stroller and we were walking back to Sara’s parents’ mountain house, when a baby bear walked by in the distance, followed by his mother. Love is nice, but love will kill somebody, right? A mother’s love is not just warm, wholesome, and gentle, and so when I read that word love which occurs in our Second Scripture lesson five times, I think about how love is an intense and active emotion. Love is a verb, and there’s a difference between talking about love and really loving. That’s why I titled this sermon: there’s a difference between watching and doing. We’ve been watching so much lately, confined to our houses. How would we have made it through this pandemic without TVs and computers? But love calls us to do. Love calls us to fight. We have to remember that, especially as Christians. I once heard a story about a Sunday School teacher who was giving her young students a tour of the church, and before they went into the worship space, she let them know how she expected them to behave. You can imagine that at their church it was something like our Sanctuary, a place to be entered with reverence and respect, therefore, before they went in, she asked her students to be quite and to walk slowly. “And you know why we must be quite and must walk slowly when we’re in the Sanctuary, right kids?” One of them, maybe 7 years old, says, “Yes mam. We must be quiet in the Sanctuary, so we don’t wake up all the people who are sleeping.” That happens. So, I admire most those who preach briefly, eloquently, and passionately. I subscribe to the preaching philosophy of Charlie Chaplain, the comedian, who once advised preachers to begin their sermon with a good joke and wrap up a really strong ending, and those two parts (the joke and the ending) should be as close together as possible. That’s good advice. But when it comes to preaching, I also subscribe to the thoughts of the great Danish Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, who famously compared the worship space to the theater, and the preacher, not to an actor, but to a director. Kierkegaard wrote that the Sanctuary and the theater, look alike. Both rooms have a place for the director, a place for the actors, and a place for the audience. In the theater the director is backstage, the actors are on stage, and the audience is in the rows of seats where they are hopefully, well entertained. Here's the difference. The worship space is different in the sense that the audience is always God. Think about that for just a moment. The audience is God. I’m one of your directors. Up here, we are the ones who tell you when to stand, what to do, and try to inspire your worshipful thoughts. And this must always be absolutely clear: While you are sitting in the pews, you are not here to be entertained, because this is a place of worship. What we do in here is offer praise to the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of this world. Have you ever thought about it like that? The question is not just whether or not you get anything out of the service. The question is, what did you give? What did you offer God? There’s a different between watching and doing, both in worship and in life. Something I’ll always remember is how years ago, I was in Tim Hammond and Jimmy Scar’s Sunday School Class, and Tim told us that he doesn’t watch movies, because he doesn’t like to watch other people live their lives, he’d rather be out in the world living his own. I like that, because it’s true. We are not passive observers but actors on the earth, and before our short time here is over, we’ve been called on to play our part, to run our race, to glorify God and enjoy him forever, to love God and obey His commandments. In addition to our two lessons for today, Scripture is clear on this point in several places. In the Bible we are warned: Don’t be hearers of the word, but doers. Don’t just memorize the 10 Commandments or notice when your friends violate them but follow them yourself for your own good. In so doing you choose life. The author of 1st John is adamant on this point. Just two weeks ago we read: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” That’s a good, clear, sound, and transparent admonition, which reminds us that Christianity is not a spectator sport, but a way of life marked by faith, hope, and the greatest of these: love. That’s the truth, and that makes us different from all the screeners and spectators around us, who are busy watching rather than doing. And being different from all of them is OK, because loving also requires distinctiveness. Now, not everyone wants to be distinctive. I haven’t always wanted to be. I remember being in Sixth grade and wanting more than anything else in the world, to be just like everyone else. To avoid being distinctive. I don’t think I had any opinions of my own. I don’t know what kind of shoes I actually liked. I just wanted the kind of shoes that everyone else had, even though they cost about $125. I remember asking my Mom to buy them for me. She wouldn’t, and probably said something like, “Joe, don’t you know that you don’t need those shoes to be special. You’re so special just as you are.” That’s love talking, and maybe love won’t get you through Sixth grade, but it will get you through life, and in this life, we cannot be afraid of what makes us distinctive. You may know already that the word “distinctive” is the key word Jeff Bezos used in his last letter delivered to Amazon shareholders He said that there are all these pressures to conform to this world, and conforming, while it might make life temporarily easier and less conflictual, it actually leads to death. Quoting a book called, “The Blind Watchmaker,” by Richard Dawkins, Bezos reminds us that, Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. This is a powerful quote, and I’m thankful that Dr. Jeffrey Meeks emailed me the article about Bezos where it’s quoted, because it points to our Christian calling, which is: to be set apart, to be distinctive, to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven even while living in established countries on the earth, and the only way we’ll be able to do it is if we know so well that we are loved and accepted by God that we stop working so hard to be loved and accepted by the world. Right now, the Church is getting all torn up again about who is in and who is out. Who can be loved and who can’t be? In the Marietta Daily Journal, I read about a preacher who spoke right to his son before the congregation during the worship service, “Son, I want you to know that your father wouldn’t kiss the bishops ring or kneel to the liberal theology sweeping this denomination which is really no theology at all.” He said this to his son to thunderous applause, and it made me very afraid and worried, because the most loving things are done when God is the only one there to applaud. Love so often comes without an obvious reward. Just yesterday I heard a sermon about that from Rev. Chelsie Wait who is one of the pastors at Ebenezer Baptist Church. She told a story about a 10-year-old boy whose mother asked him to do some chores around the house, even though he really didn’t want to do them. Finally, she said, “I’m going for a walk, and when I get back, they had better be done.” Well, she walked back in the house and they were. The whole house was clean, but there was a note on the counter, which turned out to be a bill. Took out the trash - $5.00. Cleaned the windows - $25.00. Vacuumed the kitchen - $10.00. Scrubbed the toilets - $35.00. The total came in to $75.00, which this mother wasn’t going to pay. Instead, she wrote a bill of her own to her son: Carried you around in my womb for 40 weeks – free. Labored for 5 hours – free. Changed all your diapers – free. Fed you, soothed you, even in the middle of the night – free. This is what love is. Love is active. It is doing, not watching, and so often it is done without celebration or applause. Mothers know that, perhaps better than anyone. Fathers are still learning it. I started picking up our girls from school on Wednesdays, and for the first two times I couldn’t remember to bring my numbers. When I finally got it right with my pick-up numbers proudly displayed, I pointed them out to Ms. Williams who runs the pick-up line and who is the twin sister of Stacy Jenson, one of our newest members. Expecting her to applaud for having showed up well prepared she said to me, “What do you want, a parade, for doing the minimum of what’s required?” I do, because some of us want a parade, but mothers know that love doesn’t often get you a parade, and most of the time love requires sacrifice, instead, which is much more like the love of God than anything else. The Lord, who sacrificed everything for us, his love looks like a mother’s love in the sense that to love a child, you have to allow a part, maybe several parts, of yourself to die. You have to let your independence die because a little child is completely dependent on you. You have to let your freedom die, because you aren’t free. Everywhere you go your heart is tied to someone else. You have to let your privacy die because you can’t even use the bathroom alone if there’s newborn in the house. My children walked in on me when I was in the shower yesterday, and a little part of my dignity died, and their eyes are still burning. But that’s what love is, and so those who don’t know much about it aren’t dying necessarily but that hardly means they’re living. In this terribly superficial and divided world where it can be so difficult to know what to do and what to say and where it becomes so easy just to conform, I realize that the love our Second Scripture Lesson calls us to is an active and risky thing: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments.” As you think about that verse, think about how loving feels, and the next time you are faced with a choice between staying quiet and safe or speaking the truth of your heart you’ll know exactly what you should do. I remember those times I listened to love and risked something. It was scary, but love is scary. It’s the difference between doing what is easy and doing what is right. It’s the difference between doing what is popular and what is true. It’s the difference between slowly dying and really living. It’s the difference between watching and doing what we are called to do as his disciples. On this Mother’s Day think about those women who have loved you, and don’t just think of their hugs. Think about their terribly dangerous and sacrificial love and go and do likewise. Amen.

Savior, Like a Shepherd, Lead Us

Scripture Lessons: John 10: 11-18 and 1 John 3: 16-24 Sermon Title: Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us Preached on April 25, 2021 The great religions of the world have so much in common, but there are differences of course, which, along with the many similarities, are also important to pay attention to. For example, last Wednesday morning I was honored to attend a breakfast meeting of local religious leaders hosted by Roswell Street Baptist Church. A new friend of mine, Rabbi Larry Sernovitz of Temple Kol Emeth was there, and as the two of us were talking about the incredible pair of shoes he had on, a woman handed him his breakfast: hash brown casserole and bacon. This was a moment of difference, which was addressed, politely resolved, and would have been foolish to ignore. For in order for us to eat together, we can’t ignore the reality that not all foods are Kosher and so we don’t all eat the same things. That’s important to think about. That’s how it is. We can’t allow what’s different to divide us, we can’t be ignorant of what might offend our friends and neighbors, and there are also moments when what makes us unique is worth celebrating. Think about what all makes us unique and different from Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Muslims. One unique Christian attribute among many is the image of the shepherd. It is an image of God, a metaphor for understanding the divine which we share with our Jewish brothers and sisters. The image of the Shepherd runs throughout today’s worship service from the Call to Worship, the Prayer of Confession, First and Second Scripture Lessons, and all the music that we’ve heard. This image is most associated with the 23rd Psalm which belonged to the Jewish faith long before Hobby Lobby ever put it on a wall hanging or a beach towel. You think I’m kidding about that, but you can get Psalm 23 on a beach towel, though where it really belongs is in our hearts and captured by our minds so that we can recall it when we need it most, for when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death it is imperative that we remember who is with us. Whenever a Christian thinks about what it means to know who God is, it is a comfort to go back to those most worderful words which Cheryl, Chohee, Will, and Jeffrey put to music so beautifully: The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me. I could go on reading this psalm. It is a sermon in and of itself, but I want to stop right there to point out this defining characteristic of our religion which is there in the last phrase I read. Namely, that in our faith, to survive, to have salvation, to live, is to be not alone. Think about it: What is it that comforts the sheep? It is the presence of the shepherd. And what does the shepherd do, especially for those who wander from the fold, who find themselves lost and alone? The shepherd finds them. The shepherd walks with them. The shepherd brings them back into community. The shepherd restores the isolated into the family of faith. The shepherd seeks out those who are alone so that they won’t be alone any longer. That’s different from some other religions. Being restored into the community is a different goal from what many are steadily working towards, for some are working towards the peace and quiet of solitude rather than the noise and bickering of the Father’s House. I’m thinking now of the enlightened mystic who has discovered the secrets to the universe by quieting the mind. I have this image of a hermit guru who sits on top of a mountain, resentful of those who climb up to ask him the meaning of life. In fact, this image was in a political cartoon just this morning in the AJC. These figures which we see from time to time in the movies or elsewhere are based on real people, like Vijay Gopala who recently spent 17 years living in meditative silence in an Indian forest, or the Buddha who sat under a bodhi tree for 49 days straight. They are the great adherents of Hindu and Buddhist ascetism. We know that such a strain exists in Christianity, and even Christ himself went out to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, but salvation for us looks a little bit less like the mountain top guru’s enlightenment, because for us, we receive the answers we seek once we’ve made it back to the flock, not when we’ve removed ourselves from them. We see this in Scripture. It’s there in both of today’s Scripture readings as well as so many others. In the Bible there are so many accounts of God’s people finding their way back to community, and so there is a son who wanders off, spends his inheritance, and once he’s broke all his fair-weather friends leave him to make a living sloping the hogs. This is a version of hell in our religion. To be lost, alone, and far from home, is the opposite of where God thinks we ought to be, and so to be saved by God is something like what we see in this son’s father, who embraces him and restores him into a community. The same is true of Jonah, who tries to run away but keeps being brought back to people, even people who he doesn’t like very much. Likewise, Moses leaves Egypt but must return to his tribe because that’s just how it is. Again, and again, this is the story. Ruth and Naomi find their way to a new homeland and a new community. The lost coin is found, the lost sheep gets back to the flock, the lost son finds his way home. Our God is a shepherd who tries to get us back into groups where we’ll finally be happy. Only think about this for a minute: how many of us think that we’ll only really be happy once we’ve gotten away from everybody? I have a friend who once told me that he went to visit his father in his new home out west. His dad is retired, divorced, and wealthy, so he left everything and everyone to live on top of a mountain in a cabin overlooking a valley. Apparently, it is the most picturesque prison you’ve ever seen. My friends, in which direction is your life headed? Are you moving towards community or away from it? After 14 months of pandemic functioning, do you even remember how to be around people? That’s OK if you don’t because all of us are a little awkward right now but remember this: when it comes to our faith moving towards others is moving towards salvation while moving away is like walking towards hell. So, I worry about our culture all the time. I worry about which religion has really taken our nation over. The social fabric of our society strains under the weight of deferred maintenance on basic human relationships. The institutions which once held us together are neglected. The poor live out of sight from the rich. The imprisoned are locked behind doors and punished with solitary confinement. Add on top of that the fear of a virus, which still keeps many of us home. Plus, our response to that same virus divides us between those who wear masks and those who don’t. In the midst of all of that I can’t help but think that we have forgotten how to get along, but not only that, we have forgotten what it means to be Christian. Some people, maybe many people, believe that being a Christian can be reduced down to a few simple standards of belief, and so they’ll say that we’re no longer a Christian country because we no longer believe all the same things that we used to. However, let us not forget what lies at the core of who we are and who we know God to be: from the 23rd Psalms to the story of the Prodigal Son, we know that our God is a God of relationship, and that the divine is present whenever two or more are gathered together. We must never think that being solid in our convictions but isolated and alone is the picture of one who follows Jesus. For to be Christian means to be restored in community, and to work for the restoration of all God’s children. We cannot be Christians all by ourselves. It says it right there in our Second Scripture Lesson: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” That’s a good question, and we must not make it to complicated, because we don’t have to look very far these days to find people who are in need. I imagine you can think of someone who needs what you have to offer just right across the street. Just think about it. There is now a ministry of loneliness in the United Kingdom. The government has organized to do something about what some consider to be a loneliness crisis believing that being lonely for a day is as bad for your body as smoking 15 cigarettes. Have you ever thought about that? How some of your neighbors only leave the house to go to the grocery store. How some folks on your street walk outside to get the mail and just pray that someone will walk by who can call them by name. That’s true for far too many people, in our county and even in our church, but this has always been true because there have always been those who find their way into isolation and don’t know how to break out of it. There was once a priest who decided that he’d go visit the entire congregation, so house by house he went, until finally he reached a place way out on the outskirts of town. The man who lived there hadn’t been to the church in years. In ages. He didn’t have any use for it he said, but the priest asked if he might just warm up by the man’s fire. There the priest moved one coal with the poker away from the rest and began asking the man questions about his wife, who had died, and his children, who had moved away. They went on talking for a while, and then the priest drew the man’s attention to the coal, which had gone out having been moved away from the others, and he said, “the fire within us burns brighter when we join with the family of faith from time to time.” Reach out to someone today before the light goes out from within them, and when you do, feel the light burn a little brighter within you. Amen.

Why Are You Frightened?

Scripture Lessons: 1 John 3: 1-7 and Luke 24: 36b-48 Sermon Title: Why Are You Frightened? Preached on 4/18/2021 I’ve always been scared of ghosts. Seriously. Since I was little I’ve been scared of ghosts, more than snakes or heights or anything else. I remember being young, like six or seven, in my grandmother’s basement with my older cousins who thought it would be fun to play with an old Ouija board we found. You know those things, with the “mystical planchette” that you use to communicate with the dead? It probably was fun playing with that thing for the first few minutes as my cousins summoned the spirits of our dead relatives, until I screamed so loud that my grandmother heard me, ran downstairs, and they all got in big trouble. I’m not sure exactly what it is with ghosts, but there is something about them that unsettles me, which is true for a lot of people. Many people are scared of ghosts. If they weren’t no one would scream in scary movies, and they do scream in scary movies. I’ve been one of them. What we know from every horror film that has ever been made is that ghosts rarely come visit people to tell funny jokes or make them feel better. Ghosts appear to scare people in the movies, sometimes to warn them like they did Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, or to let the living know that their souls will never be at rest unless they are avenged like they do in so many Shakespeare plays, so if a ghost shows up, movies, literature, movies, and experience has taught us to be afraid. The disciples were too. What’s clear from our Second Scripture Lesson is that they thought he was a ghost. That sounds strange to our ears. Just the idea that they would have been scared of our gentle savior sounds very strange, but they were. They were “terrified” Luke’s Gospel tells us. Why? Why did they scream like little kids or a grown pastor in a horror movie? Why weren’t they excited? Why weren’t they relieved? Think about it with me this way: had Shakespeare been the one to write the Gospel of Luke, I imagine he might have made Jesus something like the ghost king of Denmark in Hamlet. Maybe Jesus would have showed up as a ghost to tell the disciples who is to blame for his death just as the ghost king tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet’s uncle. Only worse, if this were the case, then the ghost after revenge showed up to haunt the very ones who were partly guilty for his death. Certainly, if Jesus were a ghost than he showed up to haunt the ones who felt guilty for his death. Surely, they had spent their time hiding in that locked room feeling shame. Thinking about how only the women were with him in the end. How they were the ones he called brothers, yet they abandoned, betrayed, or denied him, and maybe they were thinking that now his soul will never rest until justice is paid in full. That’s what ghosts show up to do in the popular imagination, dredge up the past, and so the Gospel of Luke tells us that “Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” [Despite this peaceful greeting] they were startled and terrified,” because they thought they were seeing a ghost. Jesus then said to them, “Why are you frightened,” and I can pretty easily answer that question and I bet you can too. Had it been me standing there, I would have assumed that Jesus’ ghost had returned to let me know how disappointed he was in me for failing him in that crucial moment. He would have spoken of that moment that led to an innocent man’s death, and how I wasn’t brave enough to do anything about it or to at least die up there with him. Isn’t that what we all assume ghosts are all about? Can you think of a single ghost who comes back from the dead to let his friends and family know how proud he is of all of them? Think about the ghosts you’ve heard about. The Headless Horseman wants a new head. The creepy twins in the Shining want someone to come and play, which is a mundane invitation that only a ghost can make sound terrifying. Little Cole Sear “sees dead people” in the Sixth Sense, and why? Why do the dead appear to him? From McBeth, Shakespeare gives us his answer: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm The instruments of darkness tell us truth Win us with honest trifles and betrayals Of deepest consequence. What do the disciples assume Jesus wants? Judas was dead already, but Peter still lived. Had Jesus returned to hold him to account for what he’d done or failed to do? When we think of ghosts, that’s something of what we think of. Even Casper wants help making peace with his past, so if the disciples are afraid, we might assume they thought he was a ghost who had come back to haunt them. Like how my grandmother once threatened my mom: “Cathy, when I die and you clean out my house, if you pull all my things out front for a yard sale, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.” That’s how we think. We imagine that souls will return to earth to let us know how we’ve failed them. We have nightmares of our beloved whispering one last word, one last message. We long for their words to be loving or affirming but we fear they’re disappointed in us. We return to the tomb of fathers and grandfathers worried that we haven’t lived up to the calling. Some even imagine that one day they will have to stand before Almighty God and when their deeds are weighed, he will either be pleased or disappointed. My friends, if you imagine that Christ would show up like a ghost who is disappointed in you than you have forgotten who he is. Just as Christ asked the disciples, we must ask ourselves, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” for Christ is not a ghost and vengeance is not what he’s looking for. Christ comes to them alive and he comes now just as he lived: full of love and forgiveness, consistent with who he always said he would be. Not like the Headless Horseman searching to do more harm in death as he’d done in life, but like the Father who welcomes the Prodigal Son home. Not like any of the figures of horror movies who terrorize the living, but like Esau who offers his brother Jacob the kind of forgiveness that he did not deserve. Not like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come who showed Scrooge his grave by pointing towards it with a shrouded bone of a finger, but like the Lamb of God Most Holy who invites us through the gates of heaven by opening his arms wide to embrace us fully. We all forget, even disciples forget, what God is like sometimes. And we think that he blames us for getting lost, when all he really wants is to find us again. I recently read a sermon by the great Howard Thurman. Thurman is now considered the brilliant theological mind of the Civil Rights movement. He was from Florida and wrote and preached all over, teaching religion at Morehouse and Howard, traveling to India to meet with Gandhi, and when thinking about the parable of the lost coin and the lost sheep he imagines what it might be like to find yourself as a lost sheep: A sheep was enjoying his grass and the other things that sheep enjoy as he went along, and then when he started feeling chilly, he didn’t recall, but the only thing that he remembers is that suddenly he became aware that he was cold, and there was a throwback in his mind, and he realized that he had been cold for some time. But the grass was good. Then he looked around and he discovered that he was alone. That everybody had gone. That is, that all the sheep had gone. And he began crying aloud. And then the shepherd, who had many sheep, missed him when he got back to the fold, and he left his ninety and nine – or whatever the number was – and he went out to try to find this sheep that was lost. And Jesus said, “God is like that.” Well of course he is, but when we find ourselves all alone, for some reason it becomes easier to believe in ghosts than in the loving, merciful shepherd. So, hear this: imagining that Peter and the others are afraid, he does what Jesus always does. Jesus, seeking out what is precious and lost, finds them and rejoices. He greets them not with anger, but with joy. Not with blame, but thanksgiving. He’s not mad at Peter, he just wants his friend to come back to the fold. That is what we must remember today. As Rev. Cassie Waits so beautifully put it in her sermon last Sunday, for a year now we’ve been like these disciples, locked behind closed doors, and now we must get back out again. The problem is that, to leave, we first must conquer our fear of ghosts. Because lockdown started, and then it lasted. No one has had dinner together. No one has seen you. So, how do you start again after not speaking for a year? There are likely all kinds of thoughts in your mind. The kind of thoughts that wake us up at night: what if they don’t like me anymore. What if there disappointed. What if they’re mad at me. These are the kinds of thoughts that lurk in our imagination and keep us confined to self-imposed prisons, so the Savior walks right in and shows us how it’s done. It all starts just by him asking, “Have you anything here to eat?” There is the traditional way to explain this request: ghosts don’t eat. By asking for food Jesus shows the disciples that he’s a living man resurrected from the dead, but there’s something else to this request, for in making it Jesus shows us that reconciliation is only as complicated as we let it be. A chasm can be bridged over a simple meal. The difference between a ghost and a real person is that ghosts aren’t real, so don’t let your fear of them keep you from living abundantly. All you have to do is show up on a doorstep trusting that death never has the final word when the Risen Lord is on our side. Our First Scripture Lesson put it this way: “See what love the father has given us… Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed,” so don’t assume that you know how the story ends. You still have the chance to come back home to community and fellowship, for Christ welcomes us all and we must be bold to welcome home each other. This is the reality of the Father’s Love. How he could have remained in the tomb and allowed our rejection of him to have the final word, but instead he sought us out again, not as a ghost. As a loving father who wants nothing more than to love his children and to bring them back home. Thanks be to God for his wonderous love. Now, let us share it with the world, for we are witnesses to these things. Amen.

Let Us Be Glad and Rejoice in His Salvation

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 25: 6-9 and John 20: 1-18 Sermon Title: Let Us Be Glad and Rejoice in His Salvation Preached on April 4, 2021 Sometimes people ask me about my Easter Sunday sermon. In the last week or so, a few friends have asked, “Joe, big Sunday coming up. What are you going to preach on?” “Well, I’ve been thinking about a sermon on the resurrection.” In a lot of ways, it’s easy to preach on Easter Sunday. It’s all right here. Today is the day. There’s not much left for the preacher to explain or illustrate. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Thanks be to God. What more need be said? But this is what I want to emphasize today: that what happened on Easter Sunday so long ago when Mary went looking for a corpse to bury and instead encountered the Lord, risen from the dead, changes everything. And it doesn’t just change the way we look at death, no longer with fear but hope for our own life eternal, but it must change the way we look at the everyday, from the moment we rise up in the morning to when we put our head down on our pillow at night. From the moment we sit down at our desk, bored already, or walk through the front door, not at all enthused about getting to another baseball practice. The resurrection must change our perspective on all the good plans that fall apart and all the crushing blows that have us reeling, because the truth of the resurrection colors how we understand the world around us and changes the way we understand what happens to us from our greatest successes to our deepest disappointments. Faith changes things. Faith in the resurrection changes things. Now, if you asked me to define a word like “faith,” I’d say something like what I just said, that faith is a way of looking at the world and understanding our lives so that we never fall victim to despair and avoid getting lost in temptation or heartache. Faith is like a lot of the words Christians like us use, but then, when we are asked to define them, we struggle to do so simply. When I’m searching for a good way to define one of our Christian code-words I often look them up in a short dictionary written by one of my favorite preachers, Frederick Buechner. When he defines the word faith, he quotes the book of Hebrews, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Then, referring to Sarah, who God told would have a child in her old age, Buechner says that “faith is laughter at the promise of a child… and “faith [even] dies, as it lives, laughing.” “Faith is not a noun, but a verb, more a process than a possession.” “Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.” It’s like friendship, which, should you put it to the test you’d ruin it. Ask someone to prove that she’s really your friend and watch how it hurts her. Likewise, faith can’t be proven but that hardly means it isn’t true. A life of faith is one lived expecting something good to happen, because you know good things have happened before, and it enables us, not just to look in one empty tomb but every empty tomb with the hope of people who are willing to be surprised by God despite a mountain of disappointment. What I’m trying to say here isn’t something simple, but of course it is. Simply put, faith is just a way of looking at the world and filling in what you don’t know, and so while we Christians often strictly define faith in positive terms, it also takes faith to look out on the unformed future with pessimism, because no one knows that they’ll be disappointed, but people often walk around with the faith that they will be. You see, people who are always pessimistic don’t know it all. They don’t expect surprises, though surprises come. Have you ever met someone who said, “I’m not a pessimist, I’m just realistic?” That’s not entirely true, for it’s not realistic to never expect anything good to ever happen. Good things happen all the time. For example: Mary was being pessimistic and realistic when she looked into the tomb, but it was empty. The Prophet Ezekiel went to a valley of dry bones and they all came back to life. The Hebrew people were saved from slavery in Egypt. David slayed a giant with a rock and a sling and the pessimist would have bet against him in that fight and would have lost it all because the giant fell. Christian faith calls us to take surprises into account, and real life often surprises us just as often as do the old Bible stories. Think about it. You can imagine how many people told Orval and Wilburn Wright that they’re plane would never get off the ground? Likewise, I once told my daughter that she could keep the old dryer I put on the side of the road if she pushed it up a hill. I told her that with pessimistic faith that she’d never be able to do it, and yet she did. I was even more surprised by her than I was at a ball I once attended in Columbia, Tennessee wearing just most of a tuxedo. No one even made fun of me for my lack of cummerbund though I expected someone to. I tell you that because only a fool is always pessimistic. A fool goes through life imagining everything is going to turn out bad. A fool confuses pessimism with realism. Murphy’s Law discounts the hand of God. And lacking imagination is sorry way to go through life, for miracles spring up all around us and I don’t want you to miss them. Consider faith then, the kind of faith which the resurrection inspires, which is nothing more than taking what you know God has done and daring to believe that God might do it again. Faith is seeing a church, wounded by division and decline and imagining that it might be named the Best Place to Worship in Cobb County three years in a row. Faith is planting seeds in the ground and expecting them to grow. Faith is sending kids to school and trusting that they’ll learn. Faith is driving your car into a roundabout and daring to believe that you’ll survive. Faith is taking the truth of an empty tomb and allowing it to color your vision of every relationship that feels like it’s hit a brick wall. For how many times has reconciliation happened? How many times have you said, “I’ll be she’ll never call,” and then the phone rang? How many days have you been sure that nothing would ever change and yet it did? How many mornings felt like Groundhog Day and yet a new day dawned. I tell you it’s happened plenty of times. It’s happened far too often for you or me to have the outlook of a pessimist. Easter Sunday calls on us to take the truth of the resurrection and allow it to change the way we see the world around us. It is a day for celebrating every seed that bloomed into flower though it seemed to be nothing more than a seed. Every child sent off to college who came back educated and purpose filled. Today is the day for giving thanks to God that even this season of pandemic is ending, and now we have the chance to do things differently than we did before, because it did not end us or close the book on our story. My friends, we can write a new story staring now. And we can write it with greater kindness. Greater unity. More respect and common decency. Having seen poverty and felt disease this last year, we may now dare to believe that something might be done to ensure a brighter future. Having heard the people shout for justice, we might listen and reimagine rather than get stuck in the cycle of the way things are. On this Resurrection Day, dare to believe that new life is jumping up from the ground and leaping from every tomb, for there is no power in death other than the power that we give it. Christ has concurred it, and it is not the end. Today is the beginning. For he has risen. He has risen indeed. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. Amen.

He Entered Jerusalem

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29, and Mark 11: 1-11 Sermon title: He Entered Jerusalem Preached on March 28, 2021 For the last five weeks, Rev. Cassie Waits and I have had the honor of talking with experts in different fields to learn more about how to practice our faith. To learn about observing the Sabbath we talked with two women, one protestant who just started really resting on the Sabbath and one Jewish who grew up doing it. Then, thinking about singing, last Wednesday we talked with two who have each dedicated their lives to music. To learn about how to celebrate our bodies as a temple where the Holy Spirit resides, we talked with a fitness instructor and an ER doc. Each week we, two of your pastors, took the seat of student to learn about things we don’t know a whole lot about, and each Wednesday Cassie assigned homework so that we all might practice doing these things we haven’t mastered and maybe get a little bit better at them. That’s what practice is for. You haven’t mastered it, so you try it and get better and better. I remember baseball practice. At the apex of my baseball career, I was sitting the bench for the Marietta High School Blue Devils, but five or six days a week we practiced, and I took that practice seriously. Why? Because at any moment Coach might send me into the game. That’s how it is with so many of us who practice at different things. Choirs practice and practice and then they sing. Some people practice their French in private but then take a big trip. On the day the plane lands in Paris, maybe they’re still not masters, but there is a difference between practicing something at home and doing it out in the open where people can hear and see you. What I want to point out to you this morning is that we have to practice our faith to get better, because on the one hand, following Jesus just like anything else. The more we practice the better at it we get, but there’s also a difference between baseball practice and practicing our faith. The baseball games are scheduled. You know when they’re coming up. When it comes to our faith, there’s no way of knowing when practice is over, and the game has begun. You just have to practice and practice for that moment, knowing that you might need the honed skills of a Christian at the drop of a hat. Scripture says these moments come like a thief in the night. Thieves don’t call a week ahead to let you know that they’ll be stopping by. Likewise, we don’t know when that moment will be that we’ll need to know how to pray, but we do know that the moment is coming. I remember so vividly this moment just before our oldest daughter was born. We didn’t know it, but the cord was wrapped around her neck and during delivery, all at once her heartbeat slowed. You can imagine what this was like. We went from anticipation to dealing in matters of life and death. Out of nowhere, my wife was being pulled from the room and into surgery. Her bed went down the hall and I wasn’t allowed to go with her. I said to mother-in-law, “What do I do?” And she said, “Joe, this is when we pray.” You see, we practice our faith because we don’t know when the big game is scheduled. We practice our faith, and when the moment comes, either we’re ready or we’re not. Either we know what to do or we don’t. Jesus was ready and this is his moment. For so long he’d been telling anyone who would listen: “I must go to Jerusalem to die.” That’s what I came here to do. These sinful people don’t understand anything. They have confused love and power, faith and laws, so I’m going to Jerusalem, and maybe if they crucify me, they’ll finally see that they have this whole thing turned upside down. That’s what Palm Sunday is all about, you see. He’d been practicing, and it hadn’t been easy for him. You remember how he told Peter that he has to go to Jerusalem to die? It was when they went up on top of the mountain, and not only did Peter try to get them to stay up on top of the mountain top, but Peter also tried to talk Jesus out of going to Jerusalem. Surely it wasn’t easy for Jesus to say to his friend, “Get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind, not on divine things but on human things.” In that moment, Christ set his sights on Jerusalem. Likely, he had been preparing himself for it long before then, but today is game day. Today the plane has landed and he’s getting off whether he’s ready or not. The people are cheering, but you can imagine him weeping, because he’s been preparing himself, not with rose tinted glasses, but seeing right through the cheers, knowing that before him is the cross. He was ready, and he rode onward. On the other hand, we know that for so many others who claim to follow him, game day came, and they forgot everything. I’ve been thinking a lot about the two mass shootings that have happened recently. The editorial cartoon in last Wednesday’s paper said, “I guess now we know things really are getting back to normal.” Two mass shootings in one month. You know as well as I do that this is not normal. And a sobering reality of how out of whack our society is, is how so many of these murderers were raised in church. Which leads me to my point: we all need to practice this faith a little bit harder because there are some who take action in this world, who walk out onto the field on gameday and act as though they’ve never heard the words: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Render no one evil for evil.” “This is the day that the Lord has made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it.” “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever.” The game came and they forgot everything. Or else, they had been practicing hate instead of love, for they denied the Gospel with their actions. They mistook their brothers and sisters. They did exactly the opposite of what the one we follow exemplified, and it tears me up inside. It makes me sick to my core, and it makes me want to shout from the mountain tops: “Christians, it’s time to practice what we preach.” For what we preach is love. What we preach is freedom. What we preach is human dignity, having sung since the nursery that each and every one are precious in his sight. That’s what we must practice. That’s what we must practice until the Father’s love spills right out of us. We need to practice our faith. And let me tell you what happens when we do. A couple weeks ago Rev. Joe Brice and Katherine Harrison were talking with Cassie and me about our book. The chapter was about saying yes and saying no, and Joe walked us through a series of statements trying to prove to us how easy it can be to say no if we just practice. He says, “Repeat after me, the light is on.” You see, you can just say that. It’s easy to say. The light is on. “The wall is green,” he said next, and we said that. Then, “I don’t have time to do that as well as I would like,” which we all repeated, though it was a little difficult because we don’t all often say it. The purpose of the exercise was to prove that the more you practice saying something, the easier it is to say it, and I tell you all this so that you’ll know why what I’m about to tell you matters. Last Tuesday was Bud Tubb’s funeral, but Dr. Jim Speed said to the family, as soon as he saw them, “This is a good day,” and he said it, not as forced words, not as empty words, not as hopeful words, but as a matter of fact. He said it just as plain as if he had just said the light is on or the wall is green, because when people practice their faith it’s there when they need it and having practiced his faith since the day he was born, Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem knowing what he was in for, ready for what awaited, that you and I might face death without fear. Because he practiced what he preached and did what he knew was right, because he rode into Jerusalem though he knew death awaited him, today we may know full well that those who die in the Lord are not lost. Instead, we trust that they are going home. Let us practice our faith so that like them, we know the way there. Amen.