Water from the Rock

Scripture Lessons: Numbers 20: 1-13 and Acts 9: 36-43 Sermon Title: Water from the Rock Preached on June 19, 2022 Last week was Vacation Bible School, an important week at our church, which makes a difference in the lives of many children, mine included. I remember moving here to Marietta as a seven-year-old, coming to our VBS not knowing a soul, but meeting friends, having snacks, and starting to feel at home in this church by the end of the week. That’s the wonder of Vacation Bible School. As a kid, I was a participant. When I was old enough, my mom enlisted me to help her as her assistant. Since becoming a pastor, I’ve had a starring role every year as Daniel, Paul, Peter, Abraham, and last week, I went into my role as Moses with a high degree of confidence. I’ve played Moses before. I had my beard on and my robe. I knew just how to put my wrap on my head with cloth to cover the beard strings, but we finished the lesson too quickly on Wednesday. We had 25 minutes to cover the battle with the Amalekites and only filled 15, leaving 10 minutes of unstructured time. That was a mistake. I suggested that the kids sit quietly and wait. That was a rookie move. Only for a few seconds did they sit quietly. Then the wheels started turning towards an insurrection. One snuck up behind me and pulled my headwrap over my eyes while another stole my shoes. Next thing I knew, I was shoeless, beardless, and felt like I was a character in Lord of the Flies instead of Wilderness Escape Vacation Bible School. What are we to say about these things? Well, in life, some things go worse than we expect them to. Other things go better. That’s how it almost always is when I go to the bedside of the sick or dying. Several years ago, I knew Jim was dying, so when I walked into his hospital room, my head was spinning with my own grief, my concern for him and his family, and a self-centered fear that I wouldn’t know what to say. Jim had chaired the committee who interviewed me and then asked the congregation to hire me as Associate Pastor at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church in Lilburn. It was my first church, and as a self-conscious green-horn pastor, I wanted to do a good job, but after I preached my first sermon there, I wasn’t sure whether I had preached a good sermon or crashed and burned. I looked up right after I gave the benediction, and Jim was giving me a thumbs up from where he always sat. Every Sunday after that he was giving me a thumbs up. What would the world be like without Jim Hodges in it? I knew he was dying, and I went to his bedside. As soon as I walked in, his wife, Carol, left the room, just in case Jim needed to tell me something he couldn’t say in front of her. “Are you afraid?” I asked him. He said, “Yes. Carol doesn’t understand the maintenance schedule for the HVAC, and she won’t pay attention whenever I try to tell her about it.” Now that wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. What was I expecting him to say? That he was terrified? He wasn’t. That his faith was shaken? It wasn’t. What are any of us expecting dying people to say or ask of us when the time they have left is ticking down to days, hours, or minutes? I tell you, while VBS will often go sidewise and end up in a place we weren’t expecting with our headband blinding us and our shoes stolen, pretty much every time I’ve gone to the bedside of the dying as Peter went to Tabitha’s, it’s been an experience of the holy. That’s the truth. Yet, I’ve known plenty of people who just couldn’t go. They say things like, “I just want to remember her as she was.” “I don’t think I could stand seeing him like that.” I get it. My dad was 51 and having quadruple bypass surgery. So sure was my mom that there was nothing serious wrong with him, she wouldn’t pay for the valet service at the hospital, but made him walk from the parking garage into the hospital. She still feels bad about that, only I get it. He was so strong and able-bodied. There hadn’t been anything wrong with him, only then, all of a sudden, he was confined to a hospital bed, only two in the room at a time. Mom wanted me to take my little brother down. He was just 13, and I was supposed to be there with him in case the sight of our dad scared him. I was 22 and was expected to handle it, though the sight of my dad hooked up to all those wires, so pale, so vulnerable, affected me to the point where it was my little brother helping me keep it together. Have you ever been to the bedside of a dying friend? Have you ever seen the one who was always so strong, weak and in pain? It’s enough to keep plenty of us away. Sometimes when parents get sick, one child ends up carrying the heaviest load while the others can’t make themselves go. What is it about the bedside? I can’t say exactly, but as the disciples are sent to the four corners of the earth, don’t forget that being called to take the Gospel across the sea and into that foreign land is no less terrifying than going to the bedside of the sick and the dying. Peter was called to the bedside of a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity, yet she became ill and died. Even the holy become ill and die. Even the lovely. The dedicated. The beautiful. The kind. The good. All become ill and die, and they called on Peter to go and be by the bedside of Tabitha. Have you ever been there? Have you had the courage to go when you were called? Not everyone has. Some of us, given the choice between taking the Gospel to China or testifying to the light at the bedside of the dying, would sooner get their passports in order. What is it that we fear about the dying? Is it that they’ll take us with them? Or is it that where they are, we’re soon to follow? I once went to visit a woman named Jean Love who was that uncommon person who was always getting ready for her funeral. She didn’t have time to beat around the bush. She once told me that she was tired of me always being late for appointments and that I should never be late to meet with old people, who take so much time to get ready and only have so much time before they have to go and use the bathroom again. I asked if she was so direct with everyone who comes to visit, and she said, “Oh, Joe. Getting old is terrible. It’s just terrible. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. I miss so many people, but getting old is so much worse if you’re afraid to look it in the eye.” Peter was called to the bedside of Tabitha, and there he had to look death in the eye. There he went to the place we all are headed. There he surely remembered what Jesus had warned him about. You remember what Jesus told him. It was when they were on the beach. Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Jesus gave Peter, then young and able-bodied, a glimpse into his future: a future no one rushes towards, so people don’t flock to the nursing homes where some are led around and taken where they don’t wish to go. No. When people reach a certain age, they are often ignored and suffer not only the aches and pains of old age but the suffering of isolation. Who goes to the bedside? Peter was called there. What did he expect to find when he got there? What do any of us find when we get there? I tell you: At the bedside of the sick and the dying is the light of Christ shining brightly. That’s what we see there, especially if we know how to see. Yesterday, our own Denise Lobodinski, along with Susan Tibbitts, organized the break room at VBS. The VBS volunteers deserve a break room. Denise sent me an email from the rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama. If you’ve been watching the news then you know that three are dead after a man walked into that church and opened fire. Denise sent me an email from the rector. Her friend has been visiting the church, and her friend’s daughter attended VBS there recently. The rector quoted my favorite verse of Scripture, John 1:5, “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” If you’ve been to the bedside of the dying then you know that already, that God draws closer by the bedside than most anywhere else. That’s why the rector was preparing to have church in what was a crime scene. It’s because the darkness is real, but so is the Light. I told you that Jim Hodges would give me a thumbs up after I preached. As he lay dying, he took a picture of his thumb so I’d always remember that he was looking down from Heaven pleased with my ministry. From his death bed, he told me he wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he saw Him. “Saw who, Jim?” I asked. “Will I laugh? Will I sing? When I see Jesus, I don’t yet know what I’ll do.” he said. Too often, we allow the suffering of today to distract us from the joy of tomorrow. I call on you, therefore, to go to the bedside of the sick and the dying today. Think about where you might go. Who is Tabitha in your neighborhood? Who is sick? Who is dying? Who hasn’t left the house? To whom are you scared to go? Take a moment and write her name down on your bulletin. Let us make a point of going there this week. But why? To do what? To see the Light shining brightly, for like water from the rock, like life after death, the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. Thanks be to God. Amen.