Wrapped in Bands of Cloth

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 9: 2-7 and Luke 2: 1-14 Sermon Title: Wrapped in Bands of Cloth Preached on December 24, 2021 I’ve been captivated lately, by an article I read in The Atlantic magazine by a self-described, “grumpy old man.” It’s titled: the Most Beloved Christmas Specials Are (Almost) All Terrible. Do you agree with that statement? The author is especially critical of those Rankin/Bass stop-motion Claymation stories. He describes the most well-known, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, like this: “It has pleasant songs and touching moments, if you like that sort of thing. It’s also terrible.” Now, you might ask, “If not Rudolf or Frosty the Snowman, what should we be watching?” According to the author of this article, Tom Nichols, “Once you clear away all [the] detritus, there are two greats that should be the mainstay of your Christmas watching, and you already know what they are: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I was especially impressed with his explanation for why A Charlie Brown Christmas. Our author says, for one thing, A Charlie Brown Christmas is only 26 minutes long, but most of all, in this classic, when Charlie Brown gives up on understanding the meaning of Christmas, Linus takes center stage, asks for a spotlight, and humbly recites the announcement of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke as if it’s a perfectly normal thing for a small child to know by heart. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” he says, and he’s right. So tonight, we focus on the baby. The one who is wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger, for while there is much to think about: Presents to wrap, food to cook, pandemics to worry over, conversations with your uncle to avoid, this baby, like all babies, demands our attention. That’s what babies do to people. Think about that trick play GEICO commercial where the football players pretend that the football is a baby and the defensive lineman start playing peekaboo. This is true of most all of us. We will do anything for a baby. I’ll be headed out to lunch when our preschool kids are getting picked up by their parents. These kids are two and three-and four-year-olds. If one calls me by name, especially this little girl named Kate Callahan, it doesn’t matter how late I’m running, I just stop in my tracks to listen to her. Likewise, a baby named Anna Leigh lives across the street from our house. If her parents are pushing her down the driveway in her stroller, she’ll literally stop traffic. Why? Because she’s precious, that’s why. And everyone wants to make her smile. Therefore, in this divided time, fraught with anxiety and fear, tonight, this worship service calls us to what Christmas is all about. And what is Christmas all about? A baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. In this passage from the Gospel of Luke, everybody surrounds him. You can imagine the shepherds trying to make him laugh. The angels, those celestial beings, hovering over him to touch his cheeks. This is the effect babies have. If wearing a mask in the grocery store made all the babies smile, no one would mind wearing them. If showing a proof of vaccination made them laugh, you’d have to pay people not to get their shots, rather than the other way around. Which points to the problem. That when the government makes us, no one wants to. And that’s where the Christmas story begins. With an Emperor who ordered his subjects around. All had to go to their own towns to be registered, for the emperor wanted to know how many people he had. Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem of Judea. Surely his wife said, “but I’m pregnant,” then Joseph feeling helpless and frustrated, grumbled something at her, and wandered outside to check on the donkey, for this feeling of being helpless in the face of government bureaucracy is one of the worst feelings that a person can feel. What Joseph felt as he was forced to uproot his family and travel like that surely felt something like living during a global pandemic, when the virus dictates what to wear and how to be. Last Christmas we were even kept from going where we wanted to go. People have had enough of it. Of course, we have. For we all have a very low tolerance for our lives being disrupted unless our lives are being disrupted by a baby. Have you ever thought about how much babies and emperors have in common? Babies drop things off their highchairs. Why? To display their power, for no matter how often they drop it, we just keep picking it up. \ Now think about Joseph. Joseph went from being told where to go by an emperor to picking up, again and again, the pacifier of an infant. He’s lost all sense of agency. However, no matter how much babies require, babies make their parents into better people than they were, because they save us from being so self-centered. They upend our plans left and right, but they also reprioritize our lives in the best way. Babies refine us and remind us again that what we were on the way to, whatever it was, isn’t nearly so important as loving them, which makes us better people and brings us joy. So, both make us do things we wouldn’t choose to do. Babies and emperors have that in common, yet they’re different, and I learned about that difference again just a few days ago. County Commissioner, Keli Gambrell, who sits in our balcony every Sunday with her family at the 8:30 service called. She told me that SafePath Children’s Advocates had received dozens of donated bikes for the foster kids in their care. They had more bikes than kids. She wanted to know if I knew of any kids who needed one of their extra bikes. Now this was the week before Christmas that Keli called me. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but most pastors are busy the week before Christmas, so there was a part of me that didn’t want another thing to do, yet, nudged by an angel I called Tim Hammond, who has a pick-up truck, and we made two trips and lined up 16 bikes right outside our church doors. Now there are 16 kids with a bike to ride on, but to make it happen, to be a part of this wonderful Christmas miracle, Tim and I had to put aside whatever else we thought was the most important thing. I had to walk away from what I thought I was supposed to do, to do what I needed to do. And now I’m here to tell you that there is an important difference between going to Bethlehem because the emperor ordered you and going to Bethlehem because you get to see the Christ child. Do you know that difference? My friends, Jesus is born unto us, and he demands our attention. He calls us to stop what we’re doing. His law of love is a call to change our ways, for just as the shepherds had to come out of the fields and the angels had to come down from heaven, we must stop in our tracks to come and see. Now this is a change. We don’t like change, so remember that his call to us is so different from the demand of an emperor. Do you know the difference? I know some people only made it here tonight because the emperor made them. I don’t know what her name is in her house, but I can imagine that she said: “No one touches the scotch until after the service.” Still, tonight is not an obligation kind of night. Why? Because Jesus didn’t come out of obligation but out of love. That’s the point. If you leave the love out of Christmas, what have you got? I hope you have plenty of egg nogg if you have a Christmas full of obligation. That’s the lesson of the other Christmas special that the old grouch, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic magazine approves of, for the Grinch can try to steal Christmas, only once he’s bagged up the trees, the presents, the decorations, and the food, he reveals what no one can ever take away. He removes the distraction to get to the heart of the matter: the baby wrapped in bands of cloth. The gift of love from God on high. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who comes to us bringing faith, hope, and love that all our tears would turn to laughter and our despair to joy. That’s what tonight is about my friends. A child who was: Born at the instant The church bells chime And the whole world whispering Born at the right time. That’s what Paul Simon sang, and this child comes to us, unafraid of our brokenness. To love us despite it. So, love him. Kneel at the manger. See him smile. Hear him laugh. And enjoy your family. Be kind to your mother. Hug your children tight. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go out of your way to do what is right. Forgive. Be kind. Care. Not because you must, but because when we love one another, we honor the one who first loved us, and came to us as a child wrapped in bands of cloth. May his light shine bright in you. Amen.

Love

Scripture Lessons: Micah 5: 2-5a and Luke 1: 39-45 Sermon Title: Love Preached on December 19, 2021 The Bible is full of unlikely friendships. This time of year, we often remember the way the Prophet Isaiah described the coming Kingdom, and he described it this way: The wolf shall live with the lamb, The leopard shall lie down with the kid, The calf and the lion and the fatling together… One prominent theologian once said, “now, the lamb probably won’t get much sleep that first night with the wolf by her side,” but just as in this prophecy, the Bible is full of unlikely friendship and the power of God is often on display through relationships that bridge the divisions in our natural world or human society. Thinking of another unlikely friendship, many a daughter in-law struggling with a house full of her husband’s family might be shocked to hear that when Ruth had the chance to get away from Naomi, she didn’t take it, but the Bible is full of relationships that defy our habits and expectations. Consider the disciples. Several were fishermen. Were they happy fishermen? I’ve never met a happy fisherman. Were they like the crabby old renegade fisherman who hunted down Jaws? He didn’t seem very easy to get along with. Then one was a tax collector. Everyone hated tax collectors. Another was a zealot and zealots hated most everyone, so how did this group made up of fishermen, tax collectors, a zealot, and the son of God get along? I don’t know, but the Bible is full of unlikely friendships. So is life. I’ve been reading about Aunt Fanny’s Cabin with considerable interest. What will happen to that old building in Smyrna? Some look at it and remember a restaurant with really good food, and we might say that the combination of good southern food they served and the bric-a-brac they nailed to the wall made it the precursor to Po’ Folks and Cracker Barrell. You could see it that way. You could also see it as a restaurant who preserved antebellum racism for out of towners to come and see. What I’ve just learned from reading about Aunt Fanny’s Cabin in the Marietta Daily Journal as well as the Atlanta Journal Constitution is that the name points to an unlikely friendship between two women: Isoline Campbell, who named the place after Fanny Williams, longtime servant of the Campbell family. I feel sure that Campbell intended the name of this restaurant to be an honor for Williams, but here’s the rub: in her spare time when she wasn’t feeding the Campbell family, Fanny Williams was a civil rights activist who spoke out passionately against the KKK and helped raise money to build the state’s first all-Black hospital in Marietta, and the restaurant reduced her to just another mamy in a head wrap. Have you ever had a “friendship” that reduced you like that? Have you ever been in a relationship where you ended up feeling less than? That happens in the world. Sometimes relationships in the world wind up with one person getting rich and the other getting used. And like the world, the Bible is full of unlikely friendships, only when God is at work, the individual is lifted by the power of love. The Bible is full of unlikely friendships in which two people from different worlds are transformed for they see each other. That’s what’s happening in today’s Gospel Lesson from Luke. Two women from different worlds offer to each other something sacred in what was surely the most unusual time of their lives. On the one hand is Mary. She’s too young, she’s pregnant, she’s unmarried, she’s powerless, and she’s all alone in the world. We’ve been watching a TV series called MAID on Netflix. It’s a series about a young mother who’s trying to make it all on her own. She seems to have no idea what she’s going to do, and yet she possesses this relentless determination to provide for her daughter no matter the obstacles. A lot of people want to help her, but no one seems to understand her. If only she’d had an Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth are not alike. While Mary is too young, Elizabeth is too old. She’s been married for years but after getting her hopes up for a baby year after year has given up and sold the bassinette and the stroller in a yard sale or something. She’s the wife of a priest, so she has means, as well as respect and power. Unlike Mary, there’s a community around Elizabeth, but who really can understand the woman who will surely get mistaken for the grandmother every time she drops her son off at preschool? So, she is unlike Mary in a sense, while she is just like Mary in the since that she is also all alone. Who can understand what it’s like to be them? Who really gets it? Their husbands? I don’t think so. That’s why this passage from the Gospel of Luke is so beautiful. The power of God brings them together and they see each other. They form a friendship. When they see each other, the baby didn’t just kick but leapt in the womb, and Elizabeth, nudged by the Holy Spirit, exclaims with a loud cry, “Blessed are you, Mary, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Do you know how good that must have felt to Mary? I imagine it was something like how it feels for a bride to tell her sister she’s engaged. Or how it feels for a young mother to be hugged by her mother. Men give each other high-fives sometimes, but women touch each other’s souls, don’t they? Of course, I’ve had friendships that made a difference. I remember graduating seminary and searching for a church who wanted me to be their pastor. I started to feel like none of them did. Now, plenty of people told me that everything would work out. Have faith. But it was when my professor, Dr. Erskine Clarke told me the same thing everyone else had been telling me that I really felt the words. When he encouraged me I cried, because I knew he really meant it. I knew his words weren’t just words. This is the beauty of friendship. A friendship that makes you feel understood and valued. A relationship that builds you up. Do you have a friend like that? Mary did. And when she felt Elizabeth’s love, she sang: My soul magnifies the Lord, And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me, And holy is his name. We call that song the Magnificat. It’s even more well-known than Mary did you know. But have you ever before noticed that Mary doesn’t sing after the angel tells her that she’ll bear a child or when she feels a stirring in her womb? No, Mary only sings when she’s safe in Elizabeth’s arms. Why? Because there is good news that we won’t let sink in until we tell someone who will understand. There is brokenness we can’t release from our hearts until we know it’s safe to let it out. That’s the power of friendship. That’s the power of love. And today, we must give thanks to God for Elizabeth, because she is the friend who helped Mary, not just make it through, but rejoice, to see for herself that she was not who those judgmental old bitties back in the village said she was. No! She was “blessed among women” for she was making possible the most unlikely friendship of all. More unlikely than an older woman befriending a young woman in the Gospel of Luke is the Son of God coming down to earth from heaven to us mortals. A book I’ve been reading that Carol Thomas gave me was written by a theologian named Robert Farrar Capon. In it he writes that God coming down to earth in Jesus Christ to us is as unlikely a pairing as a ballerina being friends with an oyster… and we’re not the ballerina in this metaphor. No, but what this relationship does: Is lifts us up from the seafloor of sin and death to the heights of heaven. It frees us to live beyond our shells or wounds or circumstance. It makes us, not snot on the half-shell or whatever else disgusting you’ve called an oyster, but heirs to the Kingdom of God. Therefore, the Apostle Paul says, “we are more than conquerors.” How? “Through him who loved us.” For God’s love, like real love, like true friendship, transforms us and transforms the world. Therefore, Mary sang of how God’s powerful love of us is enough to Scatter the proud Bring down the powerful Lift up the lowly Fill the hungry with good things And send the rich away empty Because those who know they are loved by God are unstoppable. Those who know they are worthy of something more cannot be conquered. A people who walks in the light can stand up against any power, even the power of death. Remembering Christ who came to earth, dwelling among us, let us do for each other what God has done for each of us, that they may know we are Christians by our love. Amen.

Joy

Scripture Lessons: Zephaniah 3: 14-20 and Luke 3: 7-18 Sermon Title: Joy Preached on December 12, 2021 There he was at the river Jordan, and first he calls the whole crowd a “brood of vipers.” Not many pastors would think it wise to begin the sermon that way, but that’s what John the Baptist does. Then, the crowds asked him, “if that’s who we are, what should we do?” John the Baptist cuts right to the chase and speaking again in this 21st Century from the ancient Scriptures, this morning to us he says, “Be careful about wanting more. It’s dangerous! It can lead you to do questionable things and wanting more can keep you from being satisfied with what you have already.” That’s timely advice, right? Most every child I know has a list that keeps getting longer. I can understand that. They got a catalogue from Target back in October. They circled what they wanted. That’s a fun thing to do, but this habit gets dangerous when our children grow up into adults who still think that things will make them happy. Or, who grow up into adults who feel that enormous pressure to provide more for their family than they had, then work to fulfill their every want and desire, and are tempted to cut corners or even ignore their moral compass to get them what they think they want. This is the Christmas trap: relentless want. We see something in each other’s faces this time of year as we all fall into it. Behind every Christmas card smile is this looming anxiety. Mixed in with every Christmas cookie is a wonder if it’s good enough. We shop and order and wrap, while worrying: “did we get the right thing? Will this make him happy?” My friends, today, to us and to our children, John the Baptist says: “Enough already.” Is this how Jesus would want us to celebrate his birthday? Did the Prince of Peace come to fill us with anxiety? Of course not, so stop it. Consider what you have. Be careful about wanting more. Don’t ask Santa for another coat. Go in your closest and if you’re lucky enough to have two, then give one away. Don’t work so hard for more money. If you have $1,000 in your bank account than you’re better off than most people in this country. And stop thinking about what else you want, especially if how you’re going to get it is questionable. This is a good message from John the Baptist, because it’s a message we all need to hear. Like everyone else in the 21st century, we live and breathe in a consumer culture. People are encouraged to covet what their neighbors have. We’re pushed to want more and more. More is supposed to be better, but where does wanting more get us? Well, if we can’t get it under control, it robs us of our joy. Then, as Christians who are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must ask, where does our “more” come from? Last Sunday the newspaper covered a story of modern-day slavery. Did you see it? Migrant workers were encouraged to move to Georgia to harvest onions, only their work visas were held by the management, so they couldn’t leave. They were living behind a barbed wire fence and were being paid pennies a day. Two died on the job. There was little to no access to food or safe drinking water, and it was happening in our state, not 150 years ago, but just last week. Then, maybe you’ve heard about our boycott of the winter Olympics in Beijing. Have you? If you google “slavery in China,” you’ll read headlines, asking, “did an enslaved person make your smart phone?” for according to authorities on the subject, right now 3.8 million people are living in conditions of modern slavery in China. “Enough already,” John the Baptist said. Then the people asked him what they should do. To the crowds he said, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” To the tax collectors he said, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed to you.” To the soldiers he said, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation and be satisfied with you wages.” To the consumers he said, “Don’t make getting a good deal on something matter more to you than the welfare of the people who made it.” Don’t allow your desire to have trump your commitment to decency. Especially, if you have enough already. It’s like a story I heard once that Dr. Fred Craddock told. Dr. Craddock is one of the truly great preachers. He taught at Candler School of Theology on the campus of Emory University, then went to live up in Ellijay, but he used to like to eat at the Waffle House. He said, “The Waffle House is a good place to go get a BLT. You have to take a shower after, but it’s a good place to get a BLT.” Well, once he was at the Waffle House. Waitress came up and he ordered a cup of coffee. Dr. Craddock asked for cream, and she patted down her apron and said, “I can never find anything in this capricious apron.” “Capricious?” Dr. Craddock repeated. Then she threw out six creamers on the table. He took two and pushed the four back toward the waitress, but she pushed them back towards him, saying, “Better to have and not need than need and not have.” Thinking to himself, “first capricious and now this,” he asked, “Well, are you a waitress or a philosopher?” Then he said, “But best is to take what you need and give the rest away.” Enough already. Do we not have more than we need? And what is our thirst for more cheap plastic stuff and bright shiny technology pushing us towards? Is our desire making us indifferent to the welfare of our neighbor? Is our desire making us blind to what God has given? And what has God given? A Son. So, slow down for a minute, and listen to God’s promise from Zephaniah one more time: I will save the lame. I will gather the outcast. I will bring you home. And will change your shame into praise, for joy is within your reach if you would just let go with all your desiring of stuff and enjoy the people around you. For even if you forget the almond paste in your Christmas cookies, Or notice that your husband has something in his teeth for your Christmas card picture, Even if you, like my Uncle Al did years ago, forget to take out the bag of giblets before you bake your turkey, and even if a dog named Snot is hacking on a bone under the table during your Christmas dinner, what makes Christmas Christmas isn’t the perfect table or even the perfect meal, but the people sitting at the table with you. However, what John the Baptist is pointing out is that sometimes we push those people away with our desire. No one was inviting the tax collectors over for dinner. Do you know why? Because they were shaking down their neighbors, calling it taxes but lining their pockets. And no one was happy to see the soldiers coming because they abused their power. Likewise, how hard is it to give mom a hug when she seems to care more about what the people who will be receiving the Christmas card will think of her than how the people in the picture feel? And how hard it is to rejoice with dad when he can’t stop stressing about getting the lights to twinkle on the tree? My friends, the perfect Christmas will always remain out of our reach because we’re not capable of perfect. That’s how we know it’s not required: because it’s not possible. However, joy is right within our reach if we would just give up all our reaching. We must let go of our desire for the perfect Christmas to embrace the people we’re celebrating Christmas with. Don’t reach t for more, for if you have enough, more won’t make you happy, gratitude will. Don’t compare yourself to your neighbor, for comparison is the thief of joy. Stop worrying over how everything looks. Relax into the joy of this season and focus on the gift that’s being given to you. For born unto us, the High King of Heaven who gathers the outcast shepherds to the manger and spends his whole life welcoming strangers into the family of faith. So, sing aloud, O daughter Zion, shout, O Israel! Rejoice with all your heart, for the Lord, your God is in your midst. And he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love. The King is coming. The Lord of all is in our midst. Gather some people to celebrate his birth with you, and if you let that be enough, joy will live in your heart always. Amen.

Hope

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 25: 1-10 and Jeremiah 33: 14-16 Sermon Title: Hope Preached on November 28, 2021 I’ve titled this sermon “hope,” which is a simple title. Just one word, but what is hope? How would you define it? What does it look like? What does it mean? It’s one of those words we often use, yet how do you put your finger on hope? Around this time of year, we use the word “hope” a lot. Out of the four Sundays of the season of Advent where we prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming, the theme of this Sunday, the first of four, is hope and so you heard the word in the Advent Candle Lighting, among other parts of the worship service. In addition to worship today, we often speak of hope in the context of Christmas morning: ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. That’s a happy and hopeful poem that we read this time of year, and we all know that the children hung their stockings by the chimney, because, while they didn’t know for sure, they hoped that St. Nicholas soon would be there to fill those stockings with something special. They hoped their Christmas wishes would be filled. They hoped for toys and candy. And their sense of hope is so strong it borders on certainty, for no child hangs her stocking by the chimney thinking that there’s just as much a chance that a family of mice will move in as Santa Clause filling their stocking with presents. Santa Clause saves kids from the dreadful outcome. He fulfills the hope of many, and it breaks all our hearts to think of any child to wake up without anything to open on Christmas morning. Why does that thought break our heart? Do we think toys are just that important? No. The thought breaks our hearts because hope is precious. Hope is the belief that tomorrow will be better than today. Hope is the thought that our wishes will come true. Hope is the idea of a dream fulfilled, a wish materialized, and what’s more tragic than a child whose hopes have been dashed? That’s what Santa is all about. Santa Clause brings presents, yes, but in so doing he preserves the hope of children. On this first Sunday of the Season of Advent, this Sunday when we light the candle of hope, I ask you: if Santa is there to preserve the hope of children, who is there to preserve the hope of grownups? Who’s there to save us from disappointment, cynicism, and despair? Like hope, despair is another word that we use but is hard to define. Author Brene Brown has a new book coming out this week, where she defines so many human emotions. She claims that most people are only able to label about three of their emotions: happiness, sadness, and anger, while, we humans can feel about 100 different emotions, including despair, which she defines as, the “feeling that life is too difficult.” Despair is not a fleeting feeling that work is just too hard or that a phone call too uncomfortable. You might label the emotions we feel in such circumstance as frustration or heartache. We get frustrated that we can’t put a new bike together or when we must sign up our kids for lacrosse and end up signing up ourselves (to share a real-life example of a time I felt frustrated). More than frustration, despair is the feeling that we just can’t make it and it stays and stays. Think about despair as the feeling that you feel when you have to wait for 45 minutes for your COVID booster, and as you’re waiting you get a phone call from your daughter, the ICU nurse, who tells you that she can’t come home for Thanksgiving, because while she hasn’t had a vacation in 18 months, has watched all her friends quit, is trying to care for 5 beds instead of 1, and is sick and tired of watching people who refused to be vaccinated die under her care needs to keep working through the holiday. That’s despair, that life is demanding too much of someone you love. Despair is the feeling that you feel when watch the news and a story about politicians squabbling over how to gerrymander is followed by a report of a local murder, then rising gas prices, and finally, turkey shortages. That’s despair, that life is getting worse and not better. Despair is something like how someone described raising twins. “It’s not twice as hard as having one child. It’s like treading water in a pool and someone hands you a couple of babies.” Not every parent raises twins, but every parent has felt like their life is just too much, and has wondered: how will I make it? That’s despair. Despair is the feeling that you feel when your country has been invaded, your king has been executed, your temple has been destroyed, you’ve been carted off to live in a foreign land, you used to be a doctor but now you peel potatoes, and you keep trying to get ahead but you’re tired of pushing so hard and you’re thinking of giving up because life is just too much. That’s who Jeremiah was writing to, for reality for the group of people the prophet Jeremiah addresses had been and continued to be absolutely heart breaking. It was so heart breaking that even a visit from Santa Clause wasn’t going to cut it, so, the prophet reminds the people about another who is on the way: The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise, I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David. Jeremiah tells us about this righteous branch right after Jerusalem was destroyed, right after the Holy City was cut down like a tree by the Babylonian army who invaded in the year 587 BCE. The invasion was so massive, so complete, that the Temple was demolished, the king deposed, and so many of the survivors shipped off to live in exile. According to the prophet, Israel was a tree, a great tree rooted in a place, among a people, nurtured by God, only to be floored by the ax of Babylon. And like that tree, all around him people who survived were still falling by the ax of despair. How could they look to the future with hope? After such devastation, all they could imagine was that life would get worse. That having experienced such trauma, more would be on the way. The bad things happened and would surely keep happening. As Babylon invaded Jerusalem, the siege is said to have lasted for 30 months, and when the armies finally left, what remained of the great tree that was the Holy City? Only a stump. Only a stump was left, but as the smoke lifted and the dust settled this great prophet saw a shoot spring forth. Now that’s hope. For a fresh shoot is enough to convince us that tomorrow may yet be better than today, that old dreams may yet be fulfilled, that ancient promises might be kept. Can you see it? And think about it for just a moment. Think about how inevitable it is, really. We’ve all killed our fair share of houseplants, but have you ever had a plant that just wouldn’t die? For some reason, in high school, I explored the resiliency of plants for a couple science fair projects. Once I managed to get grass to grow upside down. The next year I attempted to study the negative effects of an oil spill using a couple pansies. I watered them with motor oil, only they wouldn’t die. I took pictures of them day after day for my presentation, yet they wouldn’t die, so I pulled their leaves off to prove my hypothesis, only I left the green leaves within the frame of the picture. You could still see the leaves in the picture I took and glued to my three paneled poster, and that’s how I earned a D on my project. Likewise, think about English Ivy. Or Kudzu. Think about shoots from a Bradford Pear stump. Hope is not fragile but inevitable. Hope is as inevitable as crabgrass in your lawn. It springs forth all around us. Can’t you see it? In our Second Scripture Lesson the Prophet reminds the Jewish people in exile, telling them that hope springs forth, yet this is hardly the only reminder or the only time the people needed to be reminded of hope. For thousands of years the Jewish people have faced such violence. They’ve been the targets of prejudice. They’ve been victimized again and again. The Temple which was destroyed by the Babylonians in the time of Jeremiah was rebuilt and dedicated again more than 2,000 years ago. The celebration of the Temple’s rededication is called Hanukkah, which begins tonight. So now I ask you: if God can rebuild a Temple, won’t he rebuild your life? What’s rebuilding a relationship compared to returning a people from exile? When candles are lit, do they not break the darkness? Does a shoot from a stump not defy the power of death? For death gives way to life. Despair flees at the sight of hope springing forth. Therefore I say, our tomorrows will be better than our yesterday’s. How do I know it? Look to the stump. New life springs forth! That’s hope and that’s Jesus. A new branch growing out from an old stump. A new baby growing inside an unmarried virgin. A hope that grows from nothing at all but rises to rule the world. This is Christmas. Not the dried-out tree that’s already losing needles in your living room. Not the trash can filled with crumpled paper after the presents have been opened. No, the righteous branch that springs up for David. And he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.” So, as Christmas approaches, be ready to give up on giving up. Consider that feeling we all feel not just frustration but despair and look at how death will not have the final word for the light shines in the darkness, new shoots rise from old stumps, a baby will be born to the virgin. That’s our Lord, hope embodied. Persistent life even amid what appears to be death. Gather around his light and rejoice.

The King's Great-Grandmother

Scripture Lessons: Mark 12: 38-44 and Ruth 3: 1-5, and 4: 13-17 Sermon Title: The King’s Great Grandmother Preached on November 14, 2021 Do you remember your great-grandmother? I knew mine, just barely. My grandmother was the oldest of my great-grandmother’s children. I am the oldest of my great-grandmother’s great-grandchildren, so I was lucky enough to know her, even just barely before she died. I remember only a few things about her now: that she loved her poodles so much that she had their toenails painted, she had beautiful azaleas in her backyard, and she said the secret was fertilizing them with cow manure which she got right out of the cow pasture, and she made chicken and dumplings for me. Do you love chicken and dumplings? She made them better than any I’ve ever had. My mother learned how to cook them using my great-grandmother’s recipe. The water must boil hard before you put in the dumplings. That’s the trick, I remember. But this is the point: now I know that chicken and dumplings is a dish people made when there wasn’t anything else. It's one of those dishes that became popular during the Great Depression. You don’t need much to make it. Flour, water, what else? It tastes good, but people like my great-grandmother didn’t make it because it tasted good. If they’d had pasta or bread or pot roast, they wouldn’t have messed with chicken and dumplings. They made chicken and dumplings because they had children to feed while all they had to feed them was a chicken cercus, some flour, salt, and some lima beans. What about your great-grandmother? What about the King David’s great-grandmother? The story of Ruth, King David’s great-grandmother, is one of the most beautiful in the Bible, and it’s true. Do you know how I know Ruth’s story is true? It’s because you wouldn’t make it up this way. That’s how I know. Historians who make things up tell stories that make the king look good. Had the story of King David’s lineage been made up by a royal historian he would have told us that the king’s great-grandmother was a princess of noble origin. She’d never worked a day in her life. She certainly had no calluses on her hands from gleaning wheat in a field, and by no means had she ever lay down on a threshing floor. She was well born, wealthy, royal, and perfect. She positively was not a migrant who survived by her wits and her desperation. We know that the Bible is true because only the Bible would tell you what everyone else never talks about. Only the Bible would tell you that the greatest of Israel’s king’s is the great-grandson of a refugee. Only the Bible would tell you that in desperation she gleaned from the field. Only the Bible would take the time to tell you how this Ruth, this widowed, foreign, refugee is not only the great-grandmother of King David, but stands in the line of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of Creation. Do you hear what I’m saying? On this Kirkin of the Tartan Sunday, one of my favorite Sundays of the year. The only day of the year when I wear this kilt. I’ve never had it dry cleaned because I’ve only worn it four times before today. On this Kirkin of the Tartan Sunday we celebrate the Scottish Roots of the Presbyterian Church, for years ago the first Presbyterians came to this country from Scotland. They came searching for what they didn’t have back in the old country. They wanted freedom, and here, what did they find? They might not have gleaned for wheat in the field, but you know that they settled in places called Cabbage Towns, so prevalent was the smell of cooking cabbage, because they didn’t have anything else to eat. They took jobs in textile mills, even the children. They stacked the field stones into fences, like the ones back home. They kept their heads held high, though life pushed them down. Of course, some came over here from Scotland with plenty, but think for a second about your great-grandmother. What did she have? How did she live? How is your life today better because of sacrifices she made? Consider her faithfulness. The book of Ruth is named after Ruth. It’s not called the book of Boaz. That’s because Boaz isn’t the hero. The hero in David’s story and most every family’s history is a poor woman who kept going even though everything was taken away. We celebrate her today even if we forgot her name. Who was your great-grandmother? Who was David’s great-grandmother? Who are the great-grandmothers of this church? Did you know that there were only about 12 families, around 90 people, who collected their coins, sold a hog or two, went without, made a sacrifice, so that we could have our Sanctuary, built by the less than 100 of them to seat 400? That’s how many they said it would seat. And you can’t seat 400 of us in there. We’re talking about some malnourished fannies if 400 are going to be seated in those pews. But consider their sacrifice, consider their idealism, think about how they dreamed of a better life for us. On the other hand, what are we doing with it? Who are we? Are we heirs to their legacy? Do we honor their sacrifices? Sometimes I just don’t know if I do because I have more than my great-grandmother ever did. You could fit two of her houses inside our one. Now our dogs’ toenails aren’t painted, but we’re living high on the hog. We don’t need to make chicken and dumplings because there’s more than we need in our pantry. Yet, are we giving as much as she gave? Are we sacrificing as much as she sacrificed? Are we giving our great grandchildren as much as our great-grandmothers gave to us? Today is not only Kirkin of the Tartan Sunday. It’s also the day when we are all asked to think about what we’ll be giving to this church in the coming year. How much will it be? How much can we afford? Those are good questions. But here’s a better one: how much did your great-grandmother do for you? What did she sacrifice so that you could have a better life than she had? We keep telling the story of Ruth, it’s there in the Bible, so that we’ll all remember where we came from. King David is the decedent of a woman not so different from the lady who cleans our houses and the men who cut our grass. She didn’t speak the language, she didn’t have any papers, she was the most at risk, she was desperate and in danger, and without out her and what she was willing to do, there would be no King David. Without your great-grandmother where would you be? What did she sacrifice so that you could have a better life than she had? What all has been sacrificed so that we could have this church and the life we all live? And what might we give today, so that our great-grandchildren might have it even better. Our church is one of the pillars of this community. We’ve been here for nearly 200 years, but it’s up to us if we’ll be here for another 200. My friends, I’ve filled out our pledge card. It’s right here. We’re giving more than we did last year. Why? Because this is our church. This is the church of my wife and our children, and I’m going to give what I have, the breath God has put in my lungs, the strength of my words, and the dreams of my heart, that this church be a beacon of hope, a sanctuary for sinners, and light to the darkness for generations to come. What about you? Are you with me? Are you ready to take up the example set by our great-grandmothers? Then fill out your pledge card. Don’t worry so much about the amount. Remember the widow’s mite. Just make a commitment to give. For ours is a culture of fast-food fixes. We get hungry and reach for fried chicken, then to be happy our consumer culture sells us KFC for the soul. Let me tell you that despite what the commercials say, you’ll never be as happy as when you give to something bigger than yourself. The two best days for a boat owner are the day he bought it and the day he sold it. That’s because we keep and we spend and it leaves us empty, but when we give it fills us up. Take out your phone and use that QR code on the screen. Make a commitment to this church and carry on the tradition that is our inheritance. Amen.

These Words Are Trustworthy and True

Scripture Lessons: 1 John 3: 1-3 and Revelation 21: 1-6 Sermon Title: These Words Are Trustworthy and True Preached on November 7, 2021 Sometimes I get bogged down in thinking about how things used to be. And I don’t just mean the big things. I miss small things, like whenever I think about lunch on the Square, I think about how my two favorite restaurants: Jack’s New York Deli, which had the best French fries I’ve ever tasted, and the Butcher the Baker, whose meat and two sides gave even Mary Mac’s a run for her money, are gone, gone, gone. Then, every Monday morning I wake up and head down the driveway to get the Marietta Daily Journal. For some reason it just won’t click: the local paper is five days a week and not seven, now. And some of my favorite columnists aren’t in it anymore. It’s sad, is what it is. For when I take inventory of the present and notice what isn’t there, I often find myself looking longingly towards the past. The comfort that comes from remembering what’s gone is called nostalgia, and nostalgia can be good, so we might say that we’re lucky to be living in the 21st Century, because technology has enhanced our ability to remember the past beyond what our foremothers and forefathers could have imagined. Technology can’t bring back the French fries from Jack’s New York Deli, but yesterday we had a funeral for my grandfather. He died more than a year ago. My mother and her sister wanted to wait to gather the family, not wanting his funeral to turn into a super-spreader event. When we gathered yesterday, we looked at old pictures of him. The funeral home took all these pictures, set them to music, and made a slide show. Because of that I could see his smile again. His big old yellow tinted glasses. His shiny bald head. It’s so nice to have pictures, and we should take time to be thankful for them, because while human beings have been mourning the dead for generations upon generations, we are among the first in human history who can look at a picture and remember so vividly what the people we are missing looked like. I have an old picture of my grandfather when he was in his 20’s. People used to say that I looked like him, and I never saw it until I saw that picture. My grandmother kept all the family pictures in a big drawer in the kitchen. She was a labor and delivery nurse who never took the time to put any pictures in albums. She just threw them all, jumbled into this drawer. Maybe it would have been nice if she would have organized them a little better, even still, my grandfather didn’t know what his grandfather looked like. And today, our girls can just open their phone and magically, the pictures of so many of the people who love them are there for them to look at. It’s amazing. Even better though are old home movies or voicemails. There’s a beautiful book called, Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close, about a boy who lost his father in the terrorist attacks on September 11th. His father was in one of the towers. He knew something was happening. He was scared, and he called home while his son was at school and his wife was at work, and he left a series of voicemails: The first one: Something happened, I’m OK. They’re telling us to stay where we are. I wanted to let you know that I’m OK and not to worry. Then the Second: Something is happening. I don’t know what it is. But something is happening. Again and again, his son would listen to these voicemails to hear his father’s voice. Again and again, his son would listen and remember the person he missed. But what’s so hard about the story is that his father called home a fifth time and his son was there to hear it ring, having been sent home from school. However, having heard the fear in his father’s voice from the first four voicemails, and seeing the news on TV, that fifth time the phone rings he’s too afraid to answer. It’s the fifth voicemail that he listens to most often, and this is the trap of nostalgia, for nostalgia is a look backward without a way forward. For this boy it’s memory and shame. Comfort and pain. It’s remembering and regretting. It brought his father back, in a sense. This man who was always there when he needed him. It brought him back, but it also reminded the boy how he felt like when his father needed him, and he couldn’t even pick up the phone. Today, on this All-Saint’s Sunday, we remember. I’ll read their names at the end of the service. We’ll remember who they were. The history committee has surely preserved so many pictures of their faces. We know them. They’re pictured in the church directory, and when their names are read the bell will toll. It’s a beautiful way to remember and honor the dead, however, while we also remember those who have died in the last year today, this service isn’t just about looking backward to see who was once here with us. This passage that we’ve read from the book of Revelation is a look into the future. It’s not nostalgia, but hope. It’s not where we’ve been but where we are going. What will come next. When we will see them again. And such a look into the future is a unique comfort that our religion offers, for everyone can remember, and technology enables us to be so good at looking backwards, but looking backwards, while comforting, can also leave you empty. There’s a country song called “Time Marches On.” It came out about 25 years ago, and this song tells the story of a nice little family, in the living room the little sister is in her crib, little brother is running around like a native American brave with feathers in his hair, mama is learning how to sow, daddy is relaxing listening to the radio as Hank Williams sings Kaw Liga and Dear John. But Time Marches On you see, so that soon little sister is worried about her appearance and washing her face with clear complexion soap, little brother is dressing like a hippy, dad is nowhere around, mama’s depressed, and if that weren’t bad enough time keeps marching on until daddy’s dead, mamas in the nursing home, and brother and sister are medicated just trying to hold it together. Now there’s no shortage of depressing country songs but this one takes the cake, and I’ve listened to this one so many times I know every word. However, you listen to a song like that, and it leaves you thinking that there’s more for us in the past than there is hope for the future. And there’s others. Harry Chapin who wrote “the cats in the cradle with the silver spoon,” a song that tells the story of a boy who grows up to be just like his daddy, an absentee father who only works and never has time to be a father. There’s even Bruce Springsteen, who is the coolest man to ever live in my opinion, but he also wrote: “Glory Days,” convincing generations of rock and roll fans that those High School years are the best years of your life so enjoy them, because it’s all downhill from there. Some would say that he’s right. That the most comfort comes from looking towards the past, but the hymns of our faith tell a different story. Just a moment ago we sang: My life flows on in endless song, Above earth’s lamentation. I hear the clear, though far off hymn That hails a new creation. No storm can shake my inmost calm While to that rock I’m clinging. Since Christ is lord of heaven and earth, How can I keep from singing? That’s the Christian conviction. That we’re moving towards something better, not away from it. That we have hope for the future, not just nostalgia for the past. In this way, the Christian faith, is like driving a car. We have a little rearview mirror, and can look back to what’s behind us, but our foremost attention must be on what’s ahead: the hopeful future. And so while technology offers us a great big rearview mirror to relish in the past, Revelation says, “Keep your eyes on the road and look through the windshield.” See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them. They will be his peoples, And God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, For the first things have passed away. You might say, but these are only words. What is this based on? Can it really be so good? One of my favorite quotes of the Rev. Dr. Joan Gray who served this church as a pastor and served our denomination as Moderator of the General Assembly is, “What we don’t know, we make up, and what we make up is almost always worse than the truth.” What do we know about the future? To us, in this modern age, the future is not nearly so solid as the past. We have pictures of the past. There are no pictures of the future. However, while we can see the past we can’t go back there. While we can’t see the future, we are on our way there. And Revelation says that we must look to the future with hope, for the God who has been faithful to us in the past is waiting for us, changeless, as God has always been, in the future. The God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs Who walked beside us throughout all our days Is waiting for us. And in that place where God is waiting, we will have the chance to put right whatever regrets we have about the past. We will see those we miss face to face. And these words, this promise, I didn’t just make it up. I didn’t dream them on my ride to church this morning. No. These words are trustworthy and true. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Where You Go, I Will Go

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 9: 11-14 and Ruth 1: 1-18 Sermon Title: Where You Go, I Will Go Preached on October 31, 2021 It’s our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. If you’ve read the Harry Potter books, or read them to your kids or grandkids, then you may know that line. It’s a good one, and I believe it’s true. In this Second Scripture Lesson from the book of Ruth, Ruth chose love, and that choice reveals so much about her. It also brings light and hope to the book. So powerful is her choice that it brings light and hope to us today despite all the tragedy that’s in there. Ruth is a sad book, and the tragedy starts from the first line: In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. Desperate to survive, a man of Bethlehem went to live in the country of Moab. He took with him his wife Naomi and two sons. Then the man died. The sons married Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. When they had lived there about 10 years, the sons died. Having buried her husband, now her sons, Naomi decided to go back home, out of Moab and to Judah. Assuming her daughters-in-law would want to stay in their homeland of Moab, she kissed them goodbye. Orpah returned her kiss and left, but Ruth clung to her. That’s the choice. Ruth chose love over self-preservation. Not everyone always does. One of the saddest books you can read is Night by Elie Wiesel. It’s an account of his personal experience in a concentration camp. The scene I’ll always remember is the one where his father dies. Together they were running to escape, but his father, weaker and slower, was holding Elie back. When his father finally fell, unable to go on, Elie found within himself not tears, but “In the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like – free at last.” This impulse towards self-preservation is inside of us. This desire to leave someone behind so that we can move on ahead is always lurking in our minds. Sometimes we give into it. Sometimes we even desire keeping someone down or pushing them down so that we can get ahead. Elie Wiesel said that the greatest cruelty that the Nazi’s inflicted on him was that they revealed to him this selfishness within himself. He looked in the mirror and found that he was relieved that his father died. Giving into this impulse gives evil it’s power, and this impulse is inside all of us, yet, in lesser and greater ways, the impulse towards selfless love is also inside of us. So, today we look to Ruth and stand in awe and wonder at a woman who could have left her mother-in-law behind but chose instead to cling to her. Inspired by her devotion, very often a couple will ask me to read what Ruth says to Naomi at their wedding: Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, And your God my god. Where you die, I will die – there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, If even death parts me from you! Notice the punctuation. So rarely does the Bible use exclamation points, but there they are to make Ruth’s point. In this moment of tragedy, tragedy upon tragedy really, Ruth says to Naomi, “I choose you.” Have you ever made that kind of a choice? Almost 19 years ago I looked in Sara’s eyes and I said: In plenty and in want. In joy and in sorrow. In sickness and in health. Forsaking all others. As long as we both shall live. I choose you. And it’s our choices that show what we truly are. Should we choose to love we can change the world. We defy the power of evil. But that desire to love is always at odds with the desire to survive, and so Ruth Bell Graham, who was married to that great evangelist Billy Graham, was once asked if she’d ever considered divorce. “Divorce, never,” she said, “However, I often considered murder.” She didn’t do it, but she considered it, because the desire to leave is inside us all. And sometimes leaving is the right thing. I can think of plenty of good reasons to get divorced. I can even think of a few good reasons to murder, but the choice to love must be behind all our choices. If it isn’t we may live, but we’ll live to regret our decisions. It’s hard to do, however, because the desire to love is always at odds with these other impulses. Ruth surely felt a series of other emotions in addition to love when she chose to stay with Naomi. In addition to love I imagine she felt regret, wondering to herself, “can I really leave my homeland?” Or remorse, “what will my mother say?” Anxiety: “is there any food for us in this Bethlehem?” And on top of that, any of you who have spent a long road trip with your mother-in-law, know that these emotions coursed through her only to be followed by annoyance: why does she have to stop to use the bathroom so often? Like a lot of things, emotions move through you. Anger, desire, fear, shame, even a crisis will move through you. On the other hand, the choices that we make during a crisis will outlast even this pandemic, so choose wisely. Chose based on love. How many, overcome by setback have been chosen permanent solutions temporary problems? How many, out of momentary frustration, have done long lasting damage? How many felt anger and did irreparable harm. It’s not our emotions that define us or that even last all that long. No. It’s our choices. And there are beautiful choices, self-less choices, sacrificial choices, that echo through history. As Ruth chose to love Naomi, Martin Luther chose to stand for truth. On this day in 1517, nailing his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther made a choice that echoes through history. These 95 revolutionary opinions, most of them complaints against the pope, started the Protestant Reformation, which resulted in the formation of the Presbyterian Church, eventually. This choice brought with it suffering. First, he had to debate dispatched theologians from Rome. Refusing to recant his views, he was excommunicated by the pope and was labeled a heretic. What’s more is that the punishment for heresy at that time was being burned at the stake, and so he had to run for his life. All said, the price he paid for choosing to make public his conviction that in Christ Jesus was freedom and grace, was to live in hiding in Warburg Castle under another name. Still, when ordered to recant, he responded: “I cannot and will not recant anything, for it is dangerous and a threat to salvation to act against one’s conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me. Amen,” for having made his choice he was willing to die for it. Having made her choice, Ruth was willing to die as well, saying: Where you die, I will die – there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, If even death parts me from you! That’s some choice. It’s a choice like that which can make all the difference in a world of chaos and despair. I mentioned the Holocaust before. Yesterday I watched a movie with our daughter Lily, “Life is Beautiful.” Have you seen it? It’s the story of a well born Italian woman who falls in love with a Jewish man. As anti-Semitism grows and grows, her husband and young son are arrested and loaded onto a train car. Before the train leaves the station, this woman goes to the Nazi Officer in charge and declares, “There’s been a mistake.” Looking at his logbook and seeing the woman’s husband and son on his list he responds, “No mam. Your husband is a Jew. Your son is half-Jewish. They belong on this train. You are Italian and you should go home.” “No, there’s been a mistake,” she says. “If my husband and my son are on that train, I should be on it with them.” That’s a choice. And that choice reveals so much about her. It’s the choice to love, even if loving requires you to suffer. It’s the choice to act based on your faith and not your fear. It’s the choice to stand on your conviction rather than your emotions. That was Ruth’s choice and it’s a choice that changes the history of the world. That’s true. Just as Martin Luther’s choice to stand on his convictions started the Great Reformation, just as this wife chose to suffer with her family rather than save herself is the kind of thing that defies evil in all its forms, Ruth and Naomi go back to Bethlehem where Ruth marries again. She and Boaz have children. Ruth’s children have children. Eventually, Ruth becomes the great-grandmother of King David, the greatest of Israel’s kings. More than that, her choice leads us to the genealogy in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, there Ruth is listed as one in the line of the Redeemer King, Jesus Christ our Lord. This is how Ruth’s choice changed the world. What about his choice? In our First Scripture Lesson from the book of Hebrews we read, “not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood” we are sanctified, for when Christ had the choice between abandoning us and saving himself, When the had the choice between standing on his convictions or giving into fear, When he had the choice between leaving us and living or staying with us and dying, he chose death. With such a sacrifice, having made such a choice, he says to you and me, just as Ruth said to Naomi: Even death will not part me from you! How do you respond when someone makes a choice like that? How do you respond when someone chooses you? I tell you this, He has committed to us. How will you live for him? May we choose him just as he chose us, saying: Where you go, I will follow. Your people, no matter who they are, how they look or where they come from, shall be my people, For, as you have died for me, even death will not part me from you! Thanks be to God. Amen.

He Walked the Lonesome Valley

Scripture Lessons: Job 1: 1-5 and Job 42: 1-6 and 10-17 Sermon Title: He Walked the Lonesome Valley Preached on October 24, 2021 Something embarrassing happened to me last Tuesday morning. Something embarrassing happens to me most days, but last Tuesday is noteworthy because of why I was embarrassed. Last Tuesday morning I noticed two ladies I didn’t recognize outside the church. I guessed correctly that they were representatives from the organization helping us put together clean birthing kits for mothers who don’t have access to hospitals. These kits help mothers create a sanitary environment to deliver their newborn whether they’re in a thatch hut in Tanzania or an emergency tent in the wake of a hurricane. I proudly greeted these two ladies, led them to Holland Hall, where I remembered they would be setting up. I was impressed with myself for remembering. Then, with authoritative hospitality, I turned the lights on in Holland Hall, and noticed the panicked look on their faces. They had set up the day before in the Great Hall, and I had no idea what I was talking about. Have you ever done something like this? Have you ever tried to help someone who didn’t need your help? Have you ever done for someone what they had done or could have done for themselves? Obviously, I have, and so has Job, or so he thinks. We just read the beginning and the end of the book of Job. You’ve heard sermons based in the book of Job for three Sundays in a row, today is the fourth, and in reading from the beginning and the end, what’s possible to see is how Job has changed. He’s walked that lonesome valley and it’s changed him. From chapter 1 we just read that: His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” This is what Job always did. What we see here is that Job was in the habit of doing for his children. Every day he tried to save them, only he couldn’t. You know what happens next: One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, “While your sons and daughters were eating and drinking, a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.” Anyone with a heart would ask why something so horrible would happen to anyone, much less someone so good as Job. Unfortunately, “why bad things happen” or “why bad things happen to good people,” isn’t the question that the book of Job answers. What the book of Job does is well illustrates how Job changes. The book of Job shows us what the lonesome valley of suffering does to this man who, even amid tragedy searches out the face of God. Now that’s maybe not the answer that we all want. We all want to know why there are hurricanes, tragedies, viral pandemics, and genocide. Why are there car accidents and depression. Why do children suffer? Why does racism still exist? Why must the Braves take so long to clinch the pennant? We want an answer to these questions, yet we won’t get it on this side of heaven. However, just as important are these questions: “What do we learn from suffering? How is God at work in suffering?” We look to Job and how he changed because we all must walk the lonesome valley in one sense or another, even Jesus did. [Even] 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. The question I ask this morning is: how does it change Job? What did the lonesome valley do to him? If you compare how he was at the beginning of the book, so worried over his children sinning that he made offerings on their behalf, how did he change in the end? We just read: The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Karen-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. Did you hear that? A problem any women ought to have with the Bible is how few women are named. In fact, so few women are named in the Bible that when the Bible names one it really sticks out. It makes you slow down to listen, and in this instance at the end of the book of Job the daughters are named but not the sons. Now that never happens. What’s the Bible trying to tell us here? That after all that suffering, Job stopped trying to do everything for his sons and daughters and gave them a means to do for themselves. While in the beginning Job did everything for them. When they were hungry, Job fed them. If they were bored, he encouraged them to have a big feast. Had they sinned, even unknowingly, Job made a sacrifice so that he could take care of them; even their mistakes he took responsibility for. What changed in Job after he walked the lonesome valley? How was he different if we look at how he was before and how he was after? By the end of the book, it’s as though Job’s accepting how: We must walk this lonesome valley. We have to walk it by ourselves. Oh, nobody else can walk it for us. We have to walk it by ourselves. Isn’t that the truth? Now, I don’t like to suffer. I never have. But having suffered a little bit here and there, I can tell you it changed me, and while the miniscule suffering I’ve experienced is nothing compared with that of Job, walking the lonesome valley changed me in a similar way. In 2008 I was an Associate Pastor at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church. You might remember that in 2008, the Great Recession hit. The church was hit so hard by the recession that members stopped contributing, they stopped giving, and the Session met and projected a 40% budget deficit. What happened next? Well, the Senior Pastor just left, which was good for the budget but bad for the Associate Pastor. I was suddenly left holding the bag on a sinking ship. I went to the Presbytery office, unannounced, no appointment. I was ushered into the office of the Executive Presbyter. This is the person who oversees all the churches in a given area. I told him that things weren’t so good at Good Sharped Presbyterian Church. In fact, it might close, and I was the only pastor they had, but I didn’t know what I was doing. “How can I save this church,” I asked. Well, the Executive Presbyter said to me, “Joe, do you know anything about finances?” “No sir,” I said, “In fact, I can’t even balance my own check book.” This was back in the days when people still had checks, you see. And struck by my response, the Executive Presbyter said to me, “If you can’t balance a check book, what makes you think you’re the one to save this church?” This was one of the most important questions anyone has ever asked me: “What makes you think you’re the one to save this church?” Had it been Job, it’s as though suffering had forced him to ask, “What makes you think you’re the one to save your kids?” He couldn’t save them, could he? What could he do then? He could get out of the way, [For] 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. Why? Because that’s the way we grow in faith or anything else. The Executive Presbyter told me that since I can’t balance a check book I ought to get a group a church members who are business owners, accountants, and other financial experts and ask them for help. I did that. Guess what happened once I stopped trying to save the church myself and empowered the members of the church: We ended the year with a $40,000 surplus. Can you imagine what happened to Job’s daughters once he stopped trying to save them and gave them an inheritance? It’s like what happens when children are allowed to fail. They learn from their mistakes. It’s like what happens when teachers, mentors, or bosses, encourage people to grow. Coaches encourage their players to think. Generals allow their troops to make their own decisions. It’s like what happens a person takes a pledge card and fills it out on their own instead of hoping someone else will fund the ministries of the church for them. We’re here amid the Stewardship Season again, and this year the big push is for those who have never pledged before to pledge for the first time. Why? Because nobody else can do this for you, you’ve got to do it for yourself. The world is a place full of trial and hardship. Life is challenge after challenge. Suffering is not the exception but the rule. So, every night I stand over our daughter’s beds and pray for them. You know what’s better than that? Teaching them to pray for themselves. For the best gift is not the gift that edifies the one who gives but liberates the one who receives. With this lesson we conclude our sermon series on the book of Job, a book about suffering. And while I still find it very hard to believe that the God who knows the number of hairs on my head, who stitched me together in my mother’s womb, who died on the cross that I would be saved, would ever cause me to suffer, I believe that when we suffer our eyes are open to see his face on our own and we are changed forever. Something my grandfather told me some years ago, when I called to ask him for advice, “one of the joys of my old age will be watching you advance in your career.” It always meant so much how he believed in me. He didn’t do for me. No. He just always believed that I could. In two weeks, I’ll be preaching his funeral, and what will I say? I’ll be quoting Job 19: For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth, because having walked the valley, the faith of my mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, has become my own. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Where Were You?

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 5: 1-10 and Job 38: 1-11 and 38: 34 – 41 Sermon Title: Where Were You Preached on October 17, 2021 Do you ever look up at the stars? Way out in the country, away from the city’s lights, have you ever laid on your back in a grassy field, and just stared up so that all you see is a sky full of stars? That can be a nice thing to do. It can be a romantic thing to do. It’s also one of those things that can make you feel very small, and so the Psalmist says: when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? These are important questions to ask: What are human beings in the great scheme of things? Why is God mindful of us? Why does God care for us mortals? The night sky can make you ask these questions, and if we stop asking questions like these we can get into all kinds of trouble. Plenty of people do. We talk a lot about how people suffer from low self-esteem, and that’s one thing. Low self-esteem is a way to describe ourselves when we feel so small that we can’t imagine that God or anyone else would care anything about us, and it’s one problem, which, it seems, our society knows to address. A problem we talk less about are those who suffer from high self-esteem. Do you know anyone who suffers from high self-esteem? Who walks out into traffic and is surprised that cars don’t stop? The Psalmist asks: What are human beings in the great scheme of things? In a sense, we’re just blips in this massive universe, and it is massive. The light that we see has traveled from stars so far away, that were we to look up and notice the twinkle of the star Alpha Centauri we’d be seeing light from four years ago. There’s a star called Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion which is about 640 light years away. If Betelgeuse exploded tomorrow, we wouldn’t know about it for hundreds of years because that’s how long it takes for the light which these stars produce to travel so that we can see it. The universe is massive. It’s huge. And I’m 5 foot 10, almost the size of the University of Georgia’s quarterback, Stetson Bennett, who is 5 foot 11. Stetson Bennett is a very big deal today now the Georgia is ranks first in the nation, but what about tomorrow? What are human beings in the great scheme of things? If we say, “Not much,” that’s not entirely correct. However, do you know anyone who thinks they’re big enough that the universe ought to revolve around them? For example: Have you ever met someone who thinks she’s the Queen of the DMV, and is going to make sure you know it, by smugly asking you to go to the end of the line once you’ve found a notarized copy of your original birth certificate and seems to enjoy doing so a little too much? I once had a bad experience with a home inspector. Back in Tennessee I made the mistake of paying our contractor before the inspection, so when the home inspector showed up, pointed out how the bolts on the deck were too small and the pipes under the sink needed a studor vent, our contractor was no longer taking my calls. Therefore, I had to do all that stuff myself, which began with me finding out what a sudor vent was. It took me a few days to complete the punch list. Then, proudly, I invited the inspector to come back, only a different inspector came. Probably because she was just doing her job, not abusing her power, she just turned the knob on the sink, saw that water came out, and we passed our inspection. She didn’t even look at my studor vent. And this is my point: there are people in this world who abuse the smallest amount of power. Yet, when it comes to human power, considering the size of the universe and the majesty of God, what even is human power? Job has been seeking out God because he has a bone to pick with Him. That’s what’s going on in today’s Second Scripture Lesson. We’ve been reading about Job for three Sundays in a row now. We’ll hear from him once more next Sunday. Job seeks God out because he has some issues with how God has been running the world, only then God shows up and says to Job: “Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you… where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Surely you know!” And “what would you eat if I didn’t make it rain?” “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you?” “You don’t even know where the mountain goats give birth or where the hummingbird lays her eggs, but you’re ready to take issue with how I’m running this place?” It’s an incredible and beautiful speech which God gives here, and surely it shook Job to his core, which is what must happen to us all from time to time, for it is too easy to misunderstand our true place in this world. I’ve heard it said that humility is just remembering that God is God, and we are not. I’ve also heard it said that the key to understanding our place in the universe is remembering on the one hand that we are of immeasurable worth, yet, what’s also true, is that all flesh is as grass, and the grass withers, the flower fades. Thinking of both sides of our reality, both our worth and our finitude, two questions must be asked at once: To those who abuse even the smallest degrees of power, so that when given a clip board they proceed to walk around making people change their plumbing, God must ask, “Where were you when I shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? Yet you think you’re the king of the studor vents?” That’s a question to keep us from getting too big for our britches, but to those who can barely scrape themselves up off the ground, so beaten down and abused are they, the question must be asked, “Where were you when they crucified my Lord? Do you know that he died for you?” You see, there are two questions. One is direction towards those who read a couple articles on the internet about the CORONA Virus and think they’re epidemiologists. To them God must ask, “Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Yet you think you have it all figured out?” Another question must be asked to those who feel they have no right to even form an opinion. We must ask them, “Where were you when they nailed him to the tree? Can you not see that for you, for you, Christ suffered?” To those who get pretty good at reading the Bible and suddenly think they’ve mastered the Christian faith (Have you ever met someone who stopped practicing their religion because they thought they’d mastered it? Who, when you get into a discussion about something controversial but important, don’t listen so much as wait their turn to tell you why they’re right?), to them God must ask, “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of her young? Do you know where the mountain goat raises her young? Can you lift your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Then who are you to be so sure that you comprehend the majesty of God?” And to those who are sure that God has cursed them, or that they have no place here, to them the Church must ask, “where were you when they laid him in the tomb? For He died for you, that you might know your worth. And he rose for you, so that you might know that his love for you can never die.” There are many people in this world who have confused faith and certainty. Because they are so sure they know, they’re no longer open to who the living God is. That’s a dangerous thing, because I have many convictions that I feel very strongly about, one main one being that I have more to learn. Still, I also know this, and I can be sure of it, while to me God will always be beyond my comprehension, God is never far from those who suffer. To illustrate this point, the Lord answers Job in our Second Scripture Lesson for today, and the answer to all Job’s questions is basically this: you may never understand how this world works or why life is the way that it is, yet you will never be alone in the darkness. You will never walk alone through the valley of the shadow of death. You need not fear the shadow, for while this universe is beyond our comprehension, we are precious in his sight. This morning at the 8:30 service, a bird interrupted me when I was giving the charge and benediction at the end of the service. She flew into the sanctuary, and everyone was looking up as she flew around that big room. Nancy Tatnall told me she was a sparrow, which reminded me that I while I am not the center of the universe and I don’t have it all figured out, if His eye is on the sparrow then I know he watches me. Amen.

You Will Never Vanish From His Sight

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 4: 12-16 and Job 23: 1-9 and 16-17 Sermon Title: We Will Never Vanish from His Sight Preached on October 10, 2021 There’s a wonderful children’s book called, “It Could Be Worse,” by James Stevenson. The main character is an unflappable grandpa, who no matter what, whether his grandson got a splinter, or the dog ate a sofa cushion, only ever responded with, “it could be worse.” This response frustrated his grandchildren. They thought their grandfather never got excited about anything, and so they assumed nothing exciting ever happened to him. Only then, one day at breakfast, grandpa said, “Last night, when I was asleep, a huge bird picked me up out of bed and took me for a long ride and dropped me in the mountains. There, I heard a loud noise. It was an abominable snowman with a huge snowball which he threw at me. I got stuck inside the snowball which rolled down the mountain and finally landed on the desert. There, it began to melt. I walked across the desert, and suddenly I heard footsteps coming nearer and nearer. A moment later I got squished by a giant something or other. Before I could get up, I heard a strange noise. A great BLOB of marmalade was coming toward me. It took me across the desert until I crashed into something tall. It was sort of like an ostrich and was very cross. It gave me a big kick. Then, I went into some storm clouds, almost got hit by lightning, fell out of the clouds, landed in an ocean down about a mile to the bottom the sea, where a goldfish came swimming at me, so I swam away as fast as I could. I hid under a cup that had air in it. When it was safe, I crawled out. I started to walk but my foot got stuck in the grip of a gigantic lobster. I didn't know what to do but just then a big squid came along and squirted black ink all over the lobster. I escaped him and hitched a ride on a sea turtle that was going to the top for a bit of sunshine. I was fortunate to find a piece of toast floating by and rode to shore where I discovered a newspaper, that I quickly folded into an airplane and flew across the sea and back home to bed.” “Now, what do you think of that,” he asked his grandchildren. “Could be worse,” they both said. It could be worse. However, for Job, it could not be worse. This is the second Sunday in a row with a sermon focused on a passage from the book of Job. Rev. Cassie Waits and I plan these things out. Just as we focused on the “I AM” statements of Jesus over the summer and the book of James last month, we’re preaching sermons on the book of Job this month, which seems like a good thing to do, except for the fact that Job is just so sad. The book is abundantly depressing. It’s true. Everything bad that could happen happens to Job. He loses everything. His children die. His wealth disappears. His crops dry up. His friends come to see him, and had they said to Job, “It could be worse,” Job would have asked them, “how?” How could things possibly be worse? For Job, they couldn’t be worse, and the question the book calls us to think about is this: how is God at work in the ash heap; the place where things couldn’t get any worse? In our Second Scripture Lesson, Job seeks God out to ask this question, and it’s one that seems like a good question for us to ask in these strange days. When did this pandemic begin? March of 2020. It’s becoming harder for me to remember what life was like before it started. Can you remember? Can you remember what it was like to just come to church without having to think so much or worry so much? Can you remember what it was like to just walk into a restaurant? Can you remember what it was like to send your kids to school with some level of confidence that they would stay there for the whole week? Week before last our daughter Cece tested positive for COVID-19. I’m so thankful that her symptoms were never too severe and that the rest of us never got sick, and since Cece is too young for the vaccine, once she got over the virus and had those anti-bodies, we felt a degree of freedom we hadn’t felt in a long time To celebrate, last week we went on vacation. The girls were out of school for Fall Break. We decided to go to the Isle of Palms right outside of Charleston, and I had the bright idea to go on an overnight canoe trip on our way there. I’d read that you can canoe down the Edisto River, 23 miles, and midway spend the night in a tree house. That sounded like a great idea, but like most of my ideas it turned out not to be. Let me tell you what happened. The canoe outfitter drove a shuttle upriver, dropped us off, gave us a brief orientation, and then pushed us downriver. Within the first mile Sara and Cece steered their canoe under a branch that had a snake in it. Seeing it fall from the branch, Sara screamed and dropped her paddle. Unable to steer, the river’s current pushed them into a fallen tree, where they got stuck, and about 8 feet away on the river’s edge an alligator lay sunning herself. It doesn’t seem like this could get much worse. It didn’t. That was the worst of it, but here’s what I want to focus on. We had no time to think about how bad it was because the water kept moving us downstream. We couldn’t go back. We had to keep going. It seemed like the light was going out, like we were vanishing into darkness, and that thick darkness would cover our faces, only something also kept pushing us onward. Do you know this feeling? Again, and again, Job calls out: Answer me Lord, why? Why has this happened? Why am I hurting? What have I done? He’s not overreacting here. He’s not exaggerating. Truly, everything has gone wrong, it couldn’t get worse, but notice that this passage which we’ve read doesn’t end the book. Job’s story keeps going, for like a canoe floating down stream, the current carries him onward, and darkness is not the end, because darkness is never the end. We must remember that. For, from time to time the darkness can get to you. Do you know what I mean? Friends will ask me how the church is doing, and sometimes their voices are more downcast than I’d like. “Really Joe, how is the church doing?” They say it that way, maybe having heard that 1 out of every 4 churches will close during the pandemic. That they’ll never recover. Their doors are closed for good. So, thinking of such a reality, when asked how our church is doing, there’s a part of me that sinks down into the darkness of discouragemetn. Our pews are not full. Our choir hasn’t been singing. Wednesday Night Supper is on hiatus. Everything is a little bit weird. And yet, we’ve distributed nearly 300,000 meals out of the parking lot. We’ve provided housewarming gifts to resettled Afghan refugees. We welcome more visitors every week. The preschool continues to be a place of welcome. We have a new youth director, named Michael Sanchez. Annual staff reviews are coming up, and I’m looking forward to doing them, because I just have a whole lot of good things to say. How many masks has Bev Barlow sowed? Neighborhood group leaders, pastors, Stephens ministers, are reaching out and making phone calls. We hope to be nominated as the best place to worship in Cobb County again and hope to win for the fourth year in a row. Is there darkness? Yes. Is there hardship? Yes. Are things different? Yes. Have snakes have been falling from the trees? Have we lost a paddle? Is there an alligator on the shore? Maybe. Still, the current pushes us onward. While the darkness may at times be thick and getting thicker, we know this: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. John 1:5 has been my favorite verse of Scripture for as long as I can remember. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” The light in this verse is a person, a person named Jesus, and the book of Hebrews in our First Scripture Lesson calls him a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, who is able to sympathize with our weakness, for he suffered, and was tested in every respect. Though he was innocent, he was tried as a criminal. Though he was pure, he was whipped. Though he is the High King of Heaven, he was given a crown of thorns. Though he is due the throne, he was nailed to a cross. Though he is the Savior, he was deserted. Though he is the Son of God, he breathed his last breath and gave forth his sprit. What are we to say about these things? It could be worse? No, it couldn’t have been worse. Still, three days later he rose again from the grave for the current pushed him onward, the darkness could not overwhelm him, his light would not be extinguished, even by death. So, if you feel it as we all feel it. If you feel that deep darkness that was Job’s; that shadow which grows and makes you feel like you’re soon to vanish, hold on. Hold on a while longer and see where the current takes you. Hold on a while longer, and watch, for the light will not go out, and you will never vanish from his sight. Amen.

Those Who Wander, Bring Them Back

Scripture Lessons: Esther 7: 1-6 and James 5: 13-20 Sermon Title: Those who Wander, Bring them Back Preached on September 26, 2021 You may know that just a few weeks ago, a former member of our church died, suddenly. His funeral was last Monday. A friend of mine was playing golf with this man’s son when his mother called and told him that his father had died while away on business. I can imagine few more difficult phone calls, so what I give thanks to God for amid tragedy are the little miracles like this one, that when Sam Rapp got the news that his father died, Brian Robinson was standing there with him. Now, Brian didn’t feel prepared for a moment like this one. He’s a dentist, not a grief counselor. So, what I want to preach about today is how much comfort presence brings, how much one simple act of kindness can change things, and how God has put us here on this earth to live our faith, how the book of James calls us to do something, but the world makes too many of us afraid to act. We worry about having the right words, and so sometimes we say nothing. We worry about looking awkward or making someone uncomfortable, so we don’t act or go or pray, although in her sermon two weeks ago, Rev. Cassie Waits proclaimed that a person who calls herself a runner isn’t really a runner and a Christian who doesn’t live her faith can’t call herself a Christian. There’s a great Tony Robbins quote I heard this week. Tony Robbins is one of those self-help speakers, and this is my favorite thing I’ve heard him say, “In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.” And I tell you, churches are just full of people who know what to do, but life changing things happen when disciples have the courage to do what they know, to step out in faith as James implores: Are there any among you suffering? Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. That’s what James says, even though the cynics among us would ask: “what’s a little oil going to do in the face of cancer or heart disease?” The self-conscious among us wonder if they should even go. With their voices in our heads let us remember that a simple act of authentic kindness is enough to defy the power of sin and death. It’s true. Listen to this: on a trip to Boston a few years ago we walked the Freedom Trail. Right next to the Freedom Trail is a noteworthy Holocaust memorial. One simple glass tower dedicated to each of the concentration camps, numbers on the outsides etched in the glass of all the people murdered at each one. The numbers reach to the sky, but on the inside of the tower, where you walk through, there are quotes from survivors. This one was especially profound: Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to your friend. The world might make us feel small. Like our actions have no meaning. That there’s nothing really to be done. “Who am I to make a difference,” we’ve learned to ask, but don’t forget that you are one who can make a difference, just by doing what you know to do. That’s how it was with Esther. Our first Scripture Lesson comes from that great book which tells the story of a Jewish girl who had somehow lucked out and made it into the palace of the King of Persia while the Jewish people lived there in exile. No one there knew she was a Jew, and they didn’t need to know, for if she hid her identity, she’d be spared from all the hardship her people faced living as an oppressed minority under the most powerful empire on earth. She knew that she could get by if she’d just wake up every morning, put on her makeup, and laugh at the emperor’s jokes. She wasn’t powerful. She didn’t need to be wise. All she had to do was keep the emperor happy and she could keep on living. Maybe doing so doesn’t feel very good, however, it’s better than the alternative she could imagine. She stayed quiet and she survived until the only father she had ever known needed her. She got by until she heard that her people needed her. Then, she spoke out against the evil Haman who was plotting their demise. She said something, and surely to her it seemed to her as though her voice would be nothing more than wind whistling through the reeds. That resistance was futile. Surely, she felt as though her will to make a difference would be like water against the rock. That she was powerless to really change anything, just a pretty face with no means to persuade the emperor. Still, she spoke the words we just read. She spoke and look what happened? She saved her people from genocide. Of course, it must have been hard. Of course, it took courage. What Ester did may sound nearly impossible, and that “nearly” is what she had to remember. That audacious belief that something could be done is what it really took for her to act. She had to believe, at least a little bit, that things could change. That hope was real. That God was alive and not dead. Meanwhile, the powers of sin and death are always trying to persuade us that it’s better to hide, keep silent, over think everything, and be paralyzed by our own anxiety. That’s just where the evil one wants us: thinking that nothing can be done, for within us is the power to comfort a friend in grief, just by reaching out and squeezing his hand. Within us is the power to defy Nazi Germany with a gift of a raspberry. Within us is the means to bring those who are lost back to the land of the living; therefore, James is bold to say: My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. Did you hear that? Within you is the power to bring back the wandering sinner. And I don’t think the author of the book of James means that we should correct, shame, judge, manipulate, or lecture the wandering sinner. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a group of Christians who wanted to bring you back into the fold after having been caught dancing, smoking, or listening to rap music then you know that so often judgmental Christians push people further from the church rather than brings them back into it. I don’t like that, and I don’t believe James would either. What I believe James is talking about here is something closer to the South African principle of ubuntu, which I learned about from Katherine Wesselink’s Facebook page. Yesterday, our daughter Lily had five volleyball matches, so in between I had a lot of time to look at facebook. This is what I learned: [In some South African tribes] when someone does something wrong, he is taken to the center of the village and surrounded by his tribe for two days while they speak of all the good he has done. They believe each person is good, yet sometimes makes mistakes, which is really a cry for help. They unite in this ritual to encourage a person to reconnect with his true nature. The belief is that unity and affirmation have more power to change behavior than shame and punishment. This is known as Ubuntu – humanity towards others. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It makes me remember the pastor who preached my great uncle Jim’s funeral. He told the story of being a 9 or 10-year-old boy. His father had just died, and his house was full of people. So full that he couldn’t really make out who all was there. His memory of the day was of a bunch of men and women wanting to say some words that would make this young boy feel better. The only vivid memory this preacher had of that sad day years ago was climbing the steps, and as he did, someone took his hand and squeezed it. That was all, but that was all my Great Uncle Jim needed to do, for despite all the years that had passed between the day of his father’s funeral when he was a child and the day of my Great Uncle Jim’s death, that preacher, now retired, remembered that simple gesture which pulled him back into the land of the living by helping him see that he was not alone on one of the worst days of his life. Does it really take more than that? A simple gesture. A kind word. A raspberry in a leaf. My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. So, bring them back. Those who wander through the valley of the shadow of death, walk with them there awhile. Bring them back to the land of the living by just holding their hand. Bring them back from the shadow. Bring them back into the light by reminding them that they are more than their shame. Bring them back into community, from the pain of isolation. Don’t treat the mourning the way people used to treat leppers. Don’t isolate the sinner. Remember how Jesus was always eating with them. Do what he did: stay close by them. Don’t be afraid of the tears of hurting people. Bring them back into the church. Bring them back into the circle. Do not leave them in the cold. Do not shame them with your words. Do not add on to the oppressed the weight of your judgement. Bring them back. Bring them back. Bring them back. With that James ends his letter, and with that he challenges us to live our lives with faith, hope, and love. Amen.