Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

Trinity Sunday

Fathers’ Day

June 19, 2011

 

Genesis 1:1-5; 1:26-2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

 

 

Prayer of Illumination: Creator God, breath your Holy Word upon us this hour. Open our ears to listen. Open our eyes to the darkness of this world. And open our hearts to the message of love and compassion found in your holy scriptures. We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.

 

            I love mysteries!

            Myong and I both like to watch shows like CSI, House MD (which often involves a medical mystery), stuff like that. But one of our absolute favorites that we watch over and over, even though we’ve probably seen every episode ever made, are the Sherlock Holmes mystery series originally broadcast by the BBC but now is now being rebroadcast on PBS stations. It always amazes me how Holmes can take the tiniest of clues – stuff that always went unnoticed by most everyone else including his clueless companion, Dr. Watson … like a clump of cigar ashes … or the type of paper used to write a note … or a set of muddy footprints outside a closed window … and come to very precisely drawn conclusions about the people who left behind these clues: what they were like … what they’re daily habits were … he could even tell you that they walked with a limp, and based on the evidence that he saw he would go even further and tell you what type of injury the person had suffered – whether it was to the hip or the knee or the ankle. And as he would make these brilliant deductions and announce them, his assistant Watson would look at him dumbfounded! “Holmes,” he would ask, “How do you know these things?” And Holmes would always answer, “It’s elementary, my dear Watson.”

            Or at least, that’s what he always said in the movies. Actually, in the original stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all the short stories written for magazines and the handful of novels, Holmes never actually said that line: “Elementary, my dear Watson.” That was something that was always said by actors like Basil Rathbone or Edward Hardwicke, or Jeremy Brett, all of whom played Sherlock Holmes countless times over the years. But even in the short stories and novels, Holmes, himself, was always astounded that normal people like you and me and his friend, Dr. Watson, had so much trouble coming to the same conclusions that his brilliant mind could so easily deduce.

 

            The Bible is a book of mysteries … but a book of a very different kind of mysteries. It’s not a whodunit or an unsolved crime – not anything as mundane as that. And the clues that are left behind aren’t the kind of physical evidence you would expect in a detective story – no strands of hair, no fingerprints – not even a muddy footprint. The only clues that are left are ancient writings of a people who lived long ago, written in languages that are no longer spoken. And so, in order to decipher these clues, we have translated these ancient languages … and we have studied the cultures and the history of these ancient peoples. And what we find is that they have had an encounter with something so incredible it goes beyond the human ability to describe it! They struggle to find the words to use! Even the great analytical mind of Sherlock Holmes would be dumbfounded by the encounters these people had and struck speechless!

            One of the most profound mysteries in the Bible is the mystery of the Trinity. It is not your typical mystery! This is a religious mystery! It’s the kind of mystery that is like sand held in your hand – if you grasp it too tightly, it begins to slip through your fingers ... you have to hold it loosely. It’s the kind of mystery that is like those Magic Eye paintings that were such a craze back in the early 90’s – you know, the paintings that were filled with multi-color dots and images; and if you looked at them in a certain way, you could discern three dimensional images in the artwork … the trick was to focus your eyes beyond the images, to look beyond the mere surface of the painting and you can see far more than what had been drawn on the surface. I always found it interesting that from a mere two dimensional drawing and by focusing your gaze beyond that surface, you could see a third dimension.

The mystery of the Trinity is a lot like that … you have to look beyond the surface of the biblical text to discern the mystery the writers are trying to convey, and it’s a concept that you have to hold onto loosely, because if you don’t it will always elude you.

            There is, in fact, no direct reference to the Trinity, as such in the scriptures. Neither the Greek nor Hebrew have words that we can translate as Trinity. In fact, the word “Trinity” is a made up word – one that the Christian church came up with long ago to try to describe something that was so indescribable that none of human language up until that point had words to describe: three in one and one in three. It describes a concept that is paradoxical – almost self-contradictory – and it is … if you hold it too tightly.

            But nevertheless, the evidence is there for those who care to look beyond the mere surface … for those who are willing to see with more than just their eyes and understand with more than just their minds. And if we are so willing, then God reveals to us the holy mystery of the Trinity.

            We find evidence of the Trinity in the very first verses of Genesis – right at the very beginning. I’m not really sure that I like the translation I have chosen for the bulletin – that’s why I read from the King James. It captures the nuance of the ancient language a little better, I think (at least in this instance). For it gives us evidence of God as the creator … God as the Father of the universe. And when the earth first existed it was without form and that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And when God creates, God does so through the spoken Word. It is the divine Word, that is Jesus Christ, that brings creation into being.

            And right there you have it, the first forensic evidence of the Trinity, appropriately laid out for us in the very first three verses of the Bible. God the Father and Creator; the Word of God who is the Son; and the Holy Spirit of God. All are present at the time of creation … all are engaged in the same act of creation … and all are working in concert with one another for a common purpose. A holy community: three in one and one in three. One God, three divine persons. A holy mystery.

            The great sages and mystics of the church have struggled over the centuries to find ways to explain to simple people like me how such a holy paradox as the Trinity can possibly exist. St. Patrick was famous for using the image of the shamrock to try to describe the Trinity to the people of Ireland: three leaves but yet it is still just one plant. And St. Augustine used the image of the tree which has three parts: the roots, the trunk, and the branches – but yet it is still one plant.

            But the best evidence for the Trinity, I find here in this room this morning – for those of us willing to look beyond the mere surface of things and see an extra dimension that isn’t readily apparent. And as evidence of that, we should direct our attention further down to verse 26. For God says, “Let us make human beings in our own image and after our own likeness.” And God created human beings – men and women, male and female, God created us. And men and women are very different from one another, but we are still one species. We look different from one another, our bodies are built different from one another, we are divided into two separate genders, but without either of those genders there’s no human race. And though we are very different from one another, we are also very much the same.

            You see, in the evidence we encounter for the existence of the Trinity, another mystery is revealed: the mystery of our own being. We are made in the image of God, in the likeness of the holy community. God created us for this kind of community … it is in our DNA … it’s in the human instinct for survival: to live together as individuals but in unity with one another … to love and be loved … to care for one another and to work together for the common good of our families, our society, and our world.

            I hope you don’t mind me talking about matters that are religious and spiritual in church … some people don’t like that. Some people think preachers ought to give practical advice … talk about politics … tell humorous stories to amuse and entertain … or give their parishioners seven easy steps to living a more abundant life.

            But where else in this materialistic world – but in church – are we going to have an opportunity to gaze our attention beyond the surface of this reality and behold a new dimension? Where else can we see with more than just our eyes and understand with more than just our minds? Where else can we speak of things that elude the ability of our language to express?

            In the name of the Holy Trinity … the Divine Mystery … Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev Michael Woods

First Presbyterian Church

June 12, 2011

Pentecost Sunday

 

Acts 2:1-21

1 Cor. 12:3b-13

John 20:19-23

 

Prayer of Illumination: Dear God, thank you for giving us these stories from the Bible that remind us of how much you love and care for the world. As you welcomed a little child long ago, we now welcome your Word. By the power of your Spirit at work in us today, teach us how to live. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

 

          When we last left the disciples, the eleven had returned to the upper room … they wait in anticipation with the other disciples, which includes a number of women and Jesus’ brothers, James and Jude … they devote themselves to prayer and to preparing themselves to receive the power of the Holy Spirit so that they can be Christ’s witnesses to all of Judea, and then Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth.

          And we gather, also, not just on Pentecost but on every day of worship. We devote ourselves to prayer and studying the scriptures … we prepare ourselves to continue the work of the disciples … to be witnesses of Jesus Christ to the ends of the world. But the disciples who gather almost seem to be afraid. They gather “together in one place,” afraid of being scattered … afraid of being without each other’s support and comfort … afraid of being without the familiarity of each others’ presence. Outside the walls of their upper room, the world has changed drastically … and it continues to change. Outside, the world seems a foreign place to them: they no longer have Jesus there to guide them through it. Most of them are simple people – provincial fishermen who hardly ever ventured outside of Judea or Galilee. They are overwhelmed by the complexity of the modern city of Jerusalem with its inhabitants and visitors from all over the Roman Empire … they are baffled and confused by the many different languages that are being spoken on the street (time was when everywhere you went in Jerusalem, everyone spoke Hebrew – and if not Hebrew, at least Aramaic) … and they are bewildered by the many different modes of dress and customs and cultures they see … they feel like aliens living in their own country. In short, the disciples are a lot like you and me.

          Every worship day, across the US – whether that day be on Saturday or Sunday or some other day of the week – it strikes me that we gather as if we are hiding from something … as if we are afraid of the world that lies on the other side of those walls. Our world has changed in ways that make us feel like aliens in our own land. But when we come into this room, we find sanctuary … we are greeted by the familiarity of friends … of people we know and love. We are comforted by familiar hymns and music … by rituals we have gone through so many times they are second nature to us … and by prayers we have prayed and sang so often we know them by heart.

          We need the comfort of the upper room, I think. We need that sanctuary! We need a place where there is some stability, in an ever-shifting world, so we can stand – so we can keep our footing … a place where we can be grounded. To say that you don’t need church is saying you don’t need to be grounded. To say that you don’t need religion is saying you don’t need anything to help you keep your footing in this world going through upheaval – you can be spiritual but not religious.

But life is like flying a kite … a kite needs to be grounded … somebody needs be standing in one place holding on to the string! … let go of the string and the kite always comes crashing down to the ground. We need some sense of stability … we need to have some sort of order in the midst of chaos – otherwise we just get carried away. We need some kind of sanctuary in our lives.

But a sanctuary is not a place where you are to spend the whole of your lives. The disciples were never intended to remain in their upper room and let the rest of the world go by.

We are now ready to meet the main character of the Book of Acts – I don’t mean Peter … and I don’t mean Paul ... I’m talking about the Holy Spirit! If Jesus is the main character of the Gospels, then it’s the Holy Spirit who is the main character of the Book of Acts. It’s the Holy Spirit who will lead Peter and the rest of disciples throughout Jerusalem, spreading the good news, giving sight to the blind, helping the lame to walk, and challenging the injustice of the Pharisees. It is the Holy Spirit who will lead Philip to broaden the Table Fellowship of the early church to include Samaritans and the Ethiopian Eunuch. It is the Holy Spirit who will change the heart of Saul of Tarsus along the road to Damascus and make him Paul the Apostle, leading him to Antioch, and to Ephesus, and Philippi, and finally to Rome – the center of the western world – and from there the good news can spread to the ends of the earth.

And everywhere the Spirit goes in the Book of Acts boundaries are pushed, walls are knocked down, traditions are reformed – people are taken out of their comfort zones. In short, everywhere the Spirit goes the afflicted are comforted and the comfortable are afflicted.

And when the Spirit makes the Spirit’s first appearance, it is with the grandest of entrances! The walls that separate the disciples from the outside world … the walls that protect and insulate the disciples – they may as well not be there! For the Spirit comes right in to the middle of the room, unhindered. And when the Spirit arrives, the Spirit brings in all the disorder of the outside world. The disciples begin to speak in all of the foreign languages of those who are outside on the streets. And those outside can hear what is going on in the upper room, and they are amazed that these provincial men and women can speak their language so fluently … so gracefully … and they hear the good news!

When we come to worship God, we cannot hide behind these walls! We ought to let the Spirit in. And if we ought to let the Spirit, then we ought to let the world in. Because the Spirit has a vision of the church of Jesus Christ that goes beyond you and me … that goes beyond 154 South McIntosh Street. It goes all up and down North and South McIntosh Street … it goes down Edwards Street and up Tusten to where it turns into Martin Luther King Avenue. It goes into the Black neighborhoods of Elberton … to the homes where Hispanic immigrants live … to where people from India, China, Japan, and Korea now live.

The church of which the Spirit has a vision cannot be contained by walls … it cannot be hidden behind stained glass windows … it is a vision of a church which itself is scattered … scattered to the ends of the earth! It is a church that meets in the homes of its members in places like Africa and Asia. It worships in English, Korean, Spanish, Mandarin, and Swahili. Its members dress in two-piece suits, kimonos, sarongs, tribal robes, blue jeans, and resort casual.  The people who gather do so with loud music, orchestras and praise bands, or with a single organ or piano ... some gather in contemplative silence. In many ways and in many manners do the people of God’s church gather!

But everywhere the people of the church gather, the Spirit finds a way in! And the Spirit brings in with it the cares and concerns of the outside world: the sick are prayed for … our national leaders are prayed for … we take up special offerings to help fight poverty and for ministries for children at risk … we commission mission teams to go out into the world to care for the poor, give aid to the sick, and shelter the homeless.

Do we really want to see the Spirit inside of the walls of this church? Do we really want to let the Spirit within the walls of our individual lives? Or do we want to hide?

Are we willing to let the Spirit shake things up? … Lead us to creatively engage the chaos of this world? Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable? Are we willing to let ourselves be afflicted? INFSHS.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

Seventh Sunday of Easter

June 5, 2011

 

Acts 1:6-14

John 17:1-11

 

            The fact that May 21 came and went and nothing happened, hasn’t stopped Harold Camping and a lot of his followers. As he has done before, he merely revised his predictions to a future date … and when that day comes and goes, we might suspect that he most assuredly will revise once again.

            And once again, in this morning’s scripture, Jesus doesn’t seem to be all too concerned with any of that. His disciples begin by asking him the question, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They’re like: Lord, we thought that the time was going to be sooner than this, and when we saw you dragged before the Sanhedrin and Pilate we thought all our hopes and dreams were lost. But now that you’re here, now that you’re back with us, surely this must be the moment … is it not!”

            But little do they know that Jesus is about to depart from them once again. Probably all of us expected May 21 to come and go – God has a way of confounding our expectations about the end of the world. And I think the reason for that is because God really doesn’t want us to concern ourselves with that. As Jesus tells us, “It is not for you to know the time or the period the Father has set by his own authority.” Which is to say that the end of the world is something for God solely to be concerned about. Our place and our concerns are just the matters at hand – just take care of the little details, leave the big stuff like the end of the world for God to take care of.

            There’s a story that’s sometimes told about St. Francis of Assisi. One day he was out working in the garden of the monastery he founded, and one of the brothers there happened to come upon him and was surprised to discover the founder of the monastery doing such mundane work. Surely their abbot had more important things to be doing! So, he asked him, “Francis, if you knew that you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do?” And the blessed saint answered him, “I’d make sure I’d finished hoeing this garden.” As if, there were no more holier work that he could be doing at that particular moment.

            Would most of us say the same thing? If we knew for sure that tomorrow was going to be our last day on earth, would we stick to the same routine? Is the work that we’re doing, holy work, so that it deserves our attention even as we take our last breath? Is the way that we’re living our life at this very moment, is that the way we think we ought to be living it when Jesus does come again?

            What’s in your bucket list? is the question we have to answer. You know what a “bucket list” is don’t you? It’s supposed to be a list of those things that you absolutely have to do in life before you “kick the bucket.” There was a movie by that name made a couple of years ago starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Two men, nearing the end of their lives, one of them well-to-do, meet together in a hospital room recovering from treatments from life-threatening illnesses. They strike up a friendship, sneak out of the cancer ward, and start going through each others’ bucket lists … they want to have a big blast together before die! They do things like travel to exotic locations and drive race cars! But by the end of the movie, they discover the secret that St. Francis knew all along: that there are some mundane things in each of their bucket lists that are far more important ... and far more in need of their attention before they die. Together, they help each other reconcile with family members from whom they have been estranged and face some of the ghosts of their own pasts. And if they don’t heal each other of the cancer that each is dying from, then they at least heal each other of another kind of cancer that has been eating away at their lives for a long time – the cancer of loneliness.

            I think God doesn’t want us to know when the world will end because we might spend the time frivolously. We might spend it driving race cars, going to Tahiti, and generally maxing out our credit cards. We would literally live like there was no tomorrow!

            Jesus wants to give us a different kind of bucket list … a bucket list more like the one Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman discover at the end of the movie … one that is filled with those things we should have been attending to all along but have neglected or were just too afraid to do anything about … but one that is, most assuredly, filled with the work of the kingdom of heaven. “You are to be my witnesses,” Jesus tells his disciples, “in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

            Rather than obsess ourselves with calculations about the end of the world and when that is going to happen and what that is going to be like, Jesus wants us to busy ourselves with the work of the kingdom. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up to heaven?” the angels ask of them after Jesus has just departed. The disciples act as if they expect the rapture to happen at any second and they can spend the time in idleness!

            Instead, they have to go back into Jerusalem. They have to come down from the lofty mountain where they are and go back down into the valley … they have to come back down to earth, so to speak. And they have to return to that upper room … probably the same upper room where they last broke bread together as a group when Jesus was still among them … on the night of his arrest.

            But it’s not an empty room to which they return. We are told that there are others there, as well. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is there along with his brothers, James and Jude. Present at the moment of his birth, Mary is again present at the birth of his church on the day of Pentecost. And Luke stresses that among them were also “certain women,” whom he doesn’t name, but whom we might guess at who they were: Mary the Magdalene, and Mary and Martha of Bethany, and Salome, perhaps. The fellowship to which the disciples return is an egalitarian one where the leadership of women is as valued as the leadership of men. They return to a fellowship of hospitality … they return to table fellowship.

            For it is at the Table where we become one. It is at the Table where, on the night of his arrest in the Gospel of John, our Lord lifted us up in his final prayer, asking for the Holy Spirit to come upon us and that we be made one with each other as he and the Father are made one. It is at this Table, breaking the bread that is his body and drinking the cup that is his blood, that we experience Holy Communion … we become one with Christ … we become one with each other … we become the body and the blood of Christ broken and shed for this world.

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

April 10, 2011

Fifth Sunday in Lent

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:17-44

 

Prayer of Illumination: Holy Spirit, who gives life to dry bones in the desert of this existence, breathe upon us the Holy Word of God, that it might teach us how to live, and so that we can be disciples of the one who is the Word of God made flesh. In his name we pray. Amen.

 

 

          If there is anything that stands out in the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, it’s not the miracle of the resurrection itself … and it’s not the fact that, at least in the King James version, the story contains the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept” … it’s the little details that really stand out.

          Like the fact that when Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, the first words out of Martha’s mouth are: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There’s something very human in that statement, I find. She is angry! I hear a tone of accusation in her voice, when I read that line: if only you had been here. She’s like: “Where have you been? We sent word to you over two days ago!” And when she says, “But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask,” I get a sense that she is dropping a not-too-subtle a hint that Jesus had better do something!

          You can imagine the hurt, and the pain, and the disappointment she’s feeling. After all, Jesus did not pause to heal the blind man two chapters earlier … a blind man he didn’t even know! But Lazarus … whom Jesus knew! … whom Jesus loved! … why couldn’t Jesus have come sooner? Why couldn’t Jesus have come on the day he was told? Why did Lazarus have to die? Why does there have to be so much pain and suffering, when it could be so easy for God to prevent it?

          The Bible is full of people asking that very question.

           In the Book of Genesis we see Abraham getting a little bit testy with God, asking, “O Lord, just when am I going to have this son you keep promising?”

          Throughout the Psalms we hear the psalmist cry out: “O Lord, how long?” How long will the righteous suffer and the wicked get away with murder? “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord … I wait for the Lord, my soul waits / and in his word I hope / my soul waits for the Lord / more than those who watch for morning / more than those who watch for morning.” (Psalm 130).

          Job is probably the one character who complains the loudest, the longest, and the strongest! “How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words?”

          The prophet Elijah goes into a state of depression when it seems that God has abandoned him … the three major prophets of the Bible – Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel – all have their complaints, as well … as do all the minor ones! And by the time we get to the New Testament, people are still asking: “How long, O Lord? … If you had only come sooner!” God has a lot of explaining to do in scripture.

          Bob Dylan, who will celebrate his 70^th birthday on May 24, immortalized that question in a song that will probably live forever:

 

How many roads must a man walk down

before you call him a man?

How many seas must a white dove fly

before she sleeps in the sand?

How many times must the cannonballs fly

before they’re forever banned?

 

          And pretty much the answer Dylan gives us in that song is that God only knows. But we keep on asking it, anyway.

          We look at the struggle for freedom that is going on in the Middle East, and while this gives us signs for hope, we have to remember this is not the first time in history the people there have longed to be free. During our soup supper last Wednesday night, Kay Legg reminded us that it was in the 1800’s that Mohammed Ali led a revolution to free Egypt from the Ottoman Empire. But eventually, they would become again the subjects of an Empire – this time the British Empire. And in the years following the 2^nd World War, after many more years of struggle, they would win their independence … only to come under a dictatorship. Now, weeks after the successful ouster of that regime, the people of Egypt still long for freedom. How much longer?

          It used to be in ancient times that famine was produced by natural causes: drought, pestilence, natural disasters. But today with modern technology, more efficient farming methods, and globalization neither of these three things – drought, pestilence, and natural disasters – have any kind of effect over world food supply. Farmers all around the world can grow more than enough food to feed all 6 billion people in this world. We grow more food than we even need! Governments have to pay farmers not to grow crops in order to keep the market stable. But with even a surplus of food, people still go hungry … people still starve to death! … How much longer?

          We go right on asking this question two thousand years after the last time it was asked! How much longer? And we add our voice to Martha’s: “Lord, if you had only come sooner … so many would not have had to suffer … so many would not have had to die. Where is this kingdom you keep talking about?”

          There are three points that we can take away from not only each of the scriptures we read this morning, but also from every time in the Bible that question is asked. The first is: It’s okay to ask that question. Notice, God never gets upset by it … no lightening from the sky … no fireballs from heaven … God never so much as even lets out an exasperated sigh, when that question is asked! It’s okay to get angry at God! Nobody dies because of it. Nobody goes to hell because of it.

          I think many of the biblical characters are far bolder than we are, today. You see, we’re afraid to get angry with God! We know that God is bigger than we are, and that God is far more powerful than we can ever imagine. And we fear that if we even so much as say a cross word to God we’ll end up a smoking pile of ashes!

          But, you know what? God is far more mature than we give God credit for being! Many years ago, Daniel Goleman wrote a book called Emotional Intelligence. In it he said that far more important than one’s intelligence quotient – what we normally call a person’s IQ – is what he called one’s Emotional Quotient. And in essence he said this was basically the ability a person has to not get carried away by their emotions – to be able to check their emotions at the door, so to speak. You see, we all realize that God has a very high IQ … we know that God is all knowing, all seeing – all those sorts of things. But for some reason, we always seem to sell God short when it comes to Emotional Intelligence. For some reason we have a picture of a God who’s just itching for a fight! Walking around with a chip on the divine shoulder!

          But scripture tells us: Our God is a gracious God, merciful and slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, ready to relent from punishing (Jonah 4:2). Emotionally, God is a lot more mature than we will ever be in this lifetime.

 

          The second point we can take away from today’s scriptures is: Notice that God never bothers to answer the question. Although it is the one question we come to over and over again in the Bible, we never really get an answer for it. Abraham gets no answer, instead he gets another promise … Job gets a whirlwind, but he doesn’t get an answer … and Jesus offers nothing by way of an answer to Martha ... no explanations … no excuses. He doesn’t say that Lazarus died to serve some greater purpose and that there was no other way to serve that purpose but for Lazarus to die.

          And maybe that’s because an answer is not what we really need. No explanations would ever be sufficient to account for all the suffering we witness in the world. There’s no excuse that God could ever come up with to justify the existence of evil in the world. It’s existence is inexcusable, it’s unjustifiable! We don’t need a God that can intellectualize the problem of evil in the world … explain it to us in academic terms … that does us no good. What we need is a God who can do something about it!

          Martha says what she says to Jesus, not because she has doubts about who Jesus is, or she’s thinking, “Well, maybe he’s not really the Messiah after all.” She asks the question because she knows better. She ask the question because she has faith in Jesus! If she had no faith, she would not then say to him: “Even now I know that anything you ask of God will be done.”

          For us to even offer to ask the question, O Lord, how long?” is to ask as a person of faith. We know we have a God who will deliver us! We know that, like Job, we can say,

 

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;  ²⁶ and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God,  ²⁷ whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.  Job 19:25-27   

 

          And with Martha, we can say, “Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”

 

          And the last point we can take away this morning is a point about the importance of the community of faith. Notice to whom Jesus’ words are directed after Lazarus comes back to life. They are said to us … to the church … to the community of disciples … to the people of faith. It is to us that Jesus says, “Undo the cloths that bind him, and let him go.”

          It is to us that Jesus says, “Undo the bindings of death in this world … unfasten the chains of evil that bring pain and suffering … so that you might live … and so that all people might live.”

          In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

4^th Sunday in Lent

April 3, 2011

 

1 Samuel 16:1-13

John 9:1-41

 

Prayer of Illumination: Holy Spirit, who is the light of Christ in our hearts, open our minds to the truth of God’s holy scriptures, reveal to our eyes the reality of the world in which we live, and open our hearts that we might know and experience the love of Christ for the world. In the name of the one who is the Word of God and the Light of the world, we pray. Amen.

 

 

            I hate the MEN’S room at WalMart!    

            I don’t mean the Men’s room at the local WalMart, here in Elberton … I mean the Men’s room they have in the WalMart Super Centers. They have fluorescent lighting fixtures mounted into every available space in the ceiling, and the lights cast down this stark bluish tinted light that’s almost blinding when you come in. And then they paint the walls white and put white tiles on the floor so that these brilliant lights from overhead are reflected off the floor and off the walls in every conceivable angle.

I have never been able to see my shadow inside any of these restrooms! (Is it like that in the Ladies’ room too?)

And the reason I can’t stand to go into one of these restrooms is because of the mirror. Every time I look up into one of these mirrors, I don’t recognize the guy I’m looking at! … The first thought that always pops into my mind is: “Oh, my gosh! That poor guy! He looks awful!” And then I realize it’s me!

I much prefer the mirror in the master bedroom at the manse. There’s not too much light in there! The fluorescent lights there cast a warmer glow on my face … and the walls have been wallpapered with a pattern of green and mauve colors that absorb the extra light … and I can draw the shades if I want to. I can look at myself all day long and not see more than I absolutely want to see!

 

Both of the scripture readings for today are about appearances … how we as human beings perceive appearances … and how what we perceive is usually not the truth of the matter.

We start off with the story of the anointing of David as king … and David’s not the first person that any of them would have pegged to be God’s first choice to be the future king of Israel. He’s the smallest of Jesse’s sons … just a boy out tending the sheep. He doesn’t have the stature or the athletic build or the commanding presence of his older, bigger, and more muscular brothers. At the High Museum in Atlanta a few years ago, they had an exhibition of Caravaggio’s bronze sculpture of David. The artist depicted him as small and thin … almost effeminate. But lying at David’s feet was the head of the giant, Goliath.

The scripture tells us: the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

And Jesus’ disciples are easily fooled by outward appearances, as well. When they first come across the blind man, they see only a blind man … and they think exactly what others in their time thought about the blind: “He must be blind because of something he did or because of something his parents did.” But, ironically, it’s the disciples who are truly blind in this story – they can’t see past their own prejudices … they can’t see past their own preconceived notions about the way the world is.

But Jesus sees something else entirely when he looks upon this man. And what he sees is a man who, because of his blindness, is trapped in darkness. And the literal darkness that this man is trapped in becomes a metaphor for the darkness that surrounds this world.

We know this darkness. We are comfortable and familiar with this darkness. It’s the darkness that sees only the surface of things … that relies solely on appearances.

The saying is true that “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” But don’t we do exactly that all the time? Book publishers know this … it’s why they spend so much money commissioning artists, photographers and models to create dustcovers and book jackets that are pleasing and enticing to our eyes … so that it can catch our attention sitting on the shelf of a bookstore … and we’ll be enticed to pick it up and want to take it home with us. Book publishers don’t create book covers to tell us anything about what’s in the book … they create them to make a sale.

The darkness of this world tricks us into “accepting lies as truth” (as we say in the Brief Statement of Faith). It tricks us into looking at the color of a person’s skin and making assumptions about who they are inside and what they are like. It tricks us into listening to the way a person speaks or hearing an accent and then coming to a conclusion about their intelligence. And it tricks us into looking at a person’s disability or their religion or their culture or their way of dress and then jumping to conclusions about their moral character.

And the darkness tricks us like this every time we look only at the surface of things … and we never think or bother to go deeper.

There’s a great line in the movie Up in the Air. George Clooney is training his protégé and his work requires him to travel a lot. So he’s showing her how to make airline travel quicker and easier. As they are going through the airport to get to their flight, they come to the security checkpoint. They have to go through the TSA scanners, take off their shoes, remove all metal objects from their pockets, and have their luggage x-rayed. It’s a big hassle, as all of you know. There are two lines … he points to one and says, “Don’t get in that line. There are families with small children in that line. Families with small children slow down a security line every time. I never saw a baby stroller that wouldn’t completely fall apart when you try to fold it.”

Then he points over to the other line and says, “This is the line we want to get in. It’s full of Asian businessmen. Asian businessmen always pack neatly and efficiently.” Then the young lady who is his protégé says, “But isn’t that racist?” And he says, “I’m like my mom … I stereotype … it’s quicker.”

We let the darkness fool us because it’s quicker … we don’t have to do the hard work of actually having to get to know somebody. We let the darkness fool us because, seeing only the surface, we can go ahead and form judgments about a person … but if we knew a little more about them, maybe we wouldn’t be so quick to judge … maybe we would even be a little more sympathetic … as Christ is sympathetic.

What Jesus tells his disciples is true: Sin has nothing to do with this man having been born blind. If that were true, then why aren’t we all blind? But the reason this man was blind was to reveal to the disciples their own blindness. And we could say the same about everyone who is born with a different color skin than we have, or who speaks a different language than we do, or who is differently abled than we are: They are that way to reveal to us our own ignorance, our own foreignness, our own disability … and how easily we can be healed of the darkness that is within us through the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ … who is the true Light of the world … who drives away all shadows … and whose Light reveals not only the truth, but God’s everlasting love.

In his name. Amen.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

3^rd Sunday in Lent

March 27, 2011

 

Ex. 17:1-7

John 4:5-42

 

Prayer of Illumination: Loving God, draw us to the well of living water. May we drink deeply; may your waters quench our thirst in a way that we will never thirst again. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

 

 

          I think the writer of the Gospel of John intends for us to understand the story of the woman at the well in terms of the story of Nicodemus – they come one right after the other and they stand in stark contrast to each other.

          Nicodemus is a man of the Pharisees, he is well respected in the Jewish community, and he has been well-schooled in the Law of Moses and the writings of the prophets. The man has an impeccable pedigree!

          But he comes to Jesus in darkness! …which John means not just to indicate the time of day that Nicodemus approached Jesus, but also to suggest that he lacks understanding … as if there is something clouding his mind that prevents the truth of the Light that is Jesus Christ from entering his mind and giving him illumination. He has a long discussion with Jesus about spiritual things, but he never seems to understand what Jesus is trying to say to him. Jesus even seems to get a little impatient with: “You are Israel’s teacher,” he tells Nicodemus, “so, why can’t you understand these things?” Their conversation ends with Jesus telling him, “ Light has come into the world, but men love darkness, instead.” Nicodemus never understands who Jesus really is … he remains in darkness … and because he can’t understand who Jesus is, he can’t understand what Jesus is trying to teach him.

          The Samaritan woman is a nobody on the other hand … she’s such a nobody that the writer of John doesn’t even bother to give her a name – we know her only as “the Samaritan woman” or the “woman at the well.” And she’s a Samaritan … she’s not Jewish. She’s a member of an ethnic group Jews regard as half-breeds, who have mixed their worship of God with the worship of idols and foreign religions. She is the descendant of the sons and daughters of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that broke away from Judah after the death of Solomon. Her race is one of a traitor people and a band of heretics.

          But she comes to Jesus in the middle of the day! … the sun is at its highest … when the light is at its brightest … and when the heat is at its greatest! And unlike Nicodemus, she doesn’t come to Jesus having heard of him before and seeking him out. She’s never heard of Jesus and she only crosses paths with him accidently.

          And she comes at the hottest part of the day … at a time when most anyone else wouldn’t come out of the house. In ancient times, women usually went to the well to draw water in the morning or the early evening just before dark, when the temperatures are cooler. What is it that drives her out of the coolness of the house at noon to draw water from an open well? Is she that much in need of water to have to go to the well at that time? Or is it because she is so ostracized by her own community that she waits until a time when no one else is bound to be there … to avoid the knowing looks … so she won’t have to listen to the soft whispering behind her back. She is an outcast among outcasts. What is she really thirsty for?

          What is it we are thirsty for? I think people are thirsty for many different things. But I also think that in some ways we are a lot like the Samaritan woman – we don’t really know what we’re thirsty for. She comes to the well, carrying her jar thinking that the water drawn from below will be enough to satisfy her immediate needs … at least for a time. But she comes to realize that she has far deeper needs that this well will never satisfy. And Jesus gives her a taste of divine water that so fills her, she leaves behind her jar – she doesn’t even need it any longer because the water she has been given cannot be carried in a jar – and she takes it to everyone in her village … even those who may have judged her or done wrong to her in the past, she takes it to them!

          So, what is it we are thirsty for? How do we try to quench our own thirsts with the waters of this world? And what is this living water that Jesus is talking about?

          Some people think that what they’re thirsty for is fame and fortune. We hear stories on the news of celebrities who have breakdowns when they lose hold of that … and struggle desperately to get it back. We hear of people loosing fortunes in the stock market then committing suicide because they fall into such grief and despair. But are fame and fortune what those people wanted? Or were they just a shadow of the things they really needed?

          Some people try to quench their thirst through addiction … through alcohol and drugs … only to find that it doesn’t last, it doesn’t really give them what they need … but they keep coming back for another drink or another hit because it’s all they know to do. Will they ever find what they’re really thirsty for?

          And probably – most disastrously – some try to quench their  thirst through power, wrecking the lives of friends, colleagues, and family members through lies and manipulation, leaving us all thirsty.

 

          So what is this water that Jesus has which he calls “living water”, of which whoever drinks of it shall never thirst again? It is this:

          The woman comes to the well … to the same well she has always come to, which helps her get by for a day, but never really gives her all she needs. And she comes at the hottest part of the day, when her need is at its greatest! And she comes at that time of day for any number of reasons – none of which are really good when you stop to think about it. But this time when she comes, something is different … A man is there … a man who by all appearances is a Jew … and he asks her for a drink of water.

          Already Jesus has offered her a taste the Water of Life, for as we are told by the narrator of the Gospel, Jews are not supposed to associate with Samaritans. But the Water of Life cannot be contained by walls that separate people on the basis of race, ethnic background, or even religious affiliation. Without even realizing it she has already begun to drink of a water that she didn’t even know she was thirsty for!

          And notice how her eyes are opened as she continues to talk with Jesus there at the well: At first she sees only a Jew, then she understands Jesus to be a prophet, then finally realizes him to be the Christ, the one who is to come to be the savior of the world! And it’s at the hottest part of the day that we can come to realize something like this! It’s when we are at our thirstiest – at the hour of our greatest need – when we can finally understand Jesus to be who he truly is: the Christ, the Lord’s anointed, the savior of the world. He is there at the well of our deepest need, waiting to speak to us, waiting to offer us a cool sip of living water.

          And as we accept his invitation to sit with him and talk, we discover he knows everything there is to know about us. He knows our trials and tribulations … he knows our deepest needs … our hidden fears … he knows about the shame we keep hidden. And just like the woman at the well, he doesn’t judge us … he doesn’t condemn us … he doesn’t get up and walk away from us, disgusted by what we have done, or what we didn’t do, or by what we may have thought. He stays with us, as he stayed with her, giving us as much of that living water to drink as we might need because he has plenty to offer.

          And that’s what that living water is. It’s God’s grace. It’s nothing more than love and compassion and mercy. It’s nothing more than being able to sit with a person beside a well in the hottest part of the day, and knowing every rotten thing there is to know about them and not judge them, and not walk away from them. That was all that Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus by saying: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but so that the world through him might be saved.”

          This unnamed Samaritan woman comes to understand something that completely eludes Nicodemus. And I think the reason she understands it is because she comes to experience God’s grace in a way that he never can. You see, Nicodemus wants to wrestle with what Jesus is saying intellectually: he wants to try to shove all of Jesus’ teachings into preconceived categories and fit it all into an intellectual framework of Nicodemus’ own choosing. But God’s grace exceeds all human attempts to intellectualize, categorize, or rationalize. We need only to realize that this is what we are really thirsty for in life: love … compassion … forgiveness.

          Then like the woman at the well, we become vessels of this living water … offering the life it gives to all we meet … to those who may have judged us in the past … to those who may have wronged us!

          Is not this the water we have truly been thirsty for our whole lives? To love and be loved … to forgive and be forgiven?

          Jesus is indeed the Christ … who brings living water … the water of mercy and compassion … the water that saves the whole world.

          Amen.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

March 20, 2011

Second Sunday in Lent

 

Genesis 12:1-4a

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

 

Prayer of Illumination: Loving God, Abram and Sarai were given sufficient faith to hear your command to go to a country they did not know. We ask that we also be given sufficient faith through the reading and the hearing of your Word to go where you might send us and so that we might be a blessing to all the nations. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

 

 

We are strangers to this world.

Undoubtedly, for every one of you out there this morning, the world you live in today is a very different place than it was long ago when you were a child and you were just becoming aware of the world around you. And this is true regardless of your age: whether you are 93 years old or just 23 years old. Our world is a very different place today than it was when we were children.

Many of you grew up in a time when there was no such thing as a computer. You did all of your adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing in your head … or if the calculations were long and complex, you wrote them out on a sheet of paper. If you wanted to write a letter, you either wrote it out in longhand or you typed it on a typewriter. Either way, if you made a mistake, correcting it neatly was always quite a chore.

I grew up in a time when, if you were talking about a computer, you were talking about a huge machine that sat inside a room the size of this sanctuary or bigger. It was loud, prone to overheating, and if you needed access to the computer then that had to be mediated through a professional priesthood of engineers and computer programmers.

Younger people like Grace and Melody were born around the time that most personal computers still used DOS! Nobody used a mouse to move a cursor on their computer screen so they could click on icons or open a window and launch a computer program. Instead, you had to memorize a series of commands that had to be typed in so the computer would do what you wanted it to.

And today, computers are no bigger than this (iPhone) … something that fits easily into your shirt pocket … has millions times more computing power than the IBM 360 mainframe I learned how to program when I was in college. You don’t need specialized knowledge or to consult with an electrical engineer in order to operate this device. In fact, Apple boasts that it is so simple, everyone is already born knowing how to use it! All you need is an index finger and you can do calculations on it … you can send and receive emails with it … you can surf the internet with it … you can make a shopping list with it … you can deposit checks in your bank account with it (Chase Bank has an application they have created where after you endorse the check, you use the iPhone to take a picture of the front and the back of the check, email the picture to the bank, and they will accept the picture as a deposit!) … and you can also – don’t forget this all important feature! – you can also use it to make telephone calls! WOW!

Who knows what’s next! We implant computers directly into our brains! But the point is: If you are older than 10 years old, then the world you inhabit today is a different one than when you were born.

 

And biologically speaking, as we get older, our bodies change and that means the world we inhabit changes around us, as well. Do you remember when you became a teenager? And your body began to change? And you became interested in things you used to not be interested in before – and in a way you had not been before? Like boys? Or girls? You were plunged into a strange new world where you felt out of place. And changes continue to happen to your bodies, as you get older; after a while, you no longer feel the youthful vigor you once did … you slow down … it starts to take longer to heal from illness or injury … joints get stiffer … muscles get softer … memories aren’t as sharp, and you find yourself in still, yet, another strange land … stranger than the one you left before.

 

And society changes, too. In the State of Georgia, there used to be only two racial classifications: there were whites and there were blacks … and people were either one or the other. Now, there are whites, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, Chicanos, and many, many people of mixed racial descent.

Culture and language change, too. Every year, hundreds of new words are added to the English language alone – because of expansions in technology and also because of the influence of other languages. Some of you probably remember the sixties when things were “groovy” … then in the early 70’s good became “bad” … when I was a teenager, we said things were “cool” … then another generation came along and things got “awesome” … and then sometime around the late 1990’s young people got caught up adding the German word “über” to everything – you couldn’t just say that things were “awesome”, they had to be “über-awesome!”

I used to be able to keep up with the changes in language, but lately I’ve found this harder and harder to do! So, I’ve had to resort to Googleing (there’s another one of those new words!) just to be able to keep up with what young people are talking about!

And our values are constantly changing, as well. In last week’s Elberton Star, there was a marriage announcement of a young black man who was marrying a young lady who is white. I can remember a time when interracial marriage would have been considered scandalous and even illegal … but today it’s celebrated as a wonderful and joyful occasion, which is as it should be.

 

But whether the changes that come are for good or bad, sometimes – especially as us get older – the world becomes a stranger to us ... we no longer recognize the world we live in as one we once knew. And we find ourselves among a strange people who have very different values from us – some we find curious, or odd or even sometimes appalling. What happened to the country we once knew? What happened to the state we lived most of our lives in? What happened to the City of Elberton? What’s happened to our little church?

But let me tell each of you this: Abram was seventy-five years old when God said to him: “I want you to pack your bags … you’re about to go to someplace you never heard of before. You’re about to live among a group of people who are going to seem strange to you … they will look much different from you … they will use tools that are strange to you … they will speak a language that is strange to you ... they might even have some values and social customs that are strange to you. But I want you to go there anyway … because they need a blessing … and you and your wife, Sarai, are to be that blessing to them!”

Abram was 75 years old at the time! If he lived in the US, he would have been old enough to apply for full benefits under Social Security! He was at an age when most people were ready to sit out on their front porch in a rocking chair full-time and reflect back on their life and cherish the memories they had made! But God tells him: “You aren’t done yet! You haven’t even begun to make memories! You may think you are near the end of your life, but you are yet to start living!”

And though we stopped at verse 4 today, if we had read on we would have discovered that when Abram and Sarai finally made it to the promised land … it was not a land of milk and honey … it was not a lush, green valley ... we are told there was famine … people were dying of starvation … crops were withering and dying in the fields … and I know they must have felt: “God, why on earth did you send us to this place?”

 

Don’t we sometimes feel a stranger to the world around us? Don’t we sometimes feel like God has plunked us down in the middle of a foreign land – even though some of us have lived in Elberton for all of our lives? Don’t we sometimes wonder: “God, why on earth have you sent us to this time and this place? Are you testing our faith? Have you forgotten about us?”

And maybe sometimes we spend a lot of time thinking about how things used to be when we were younger … thinking about the time and the place and the people that were all so much more familiar to us. and maybe we long for that time and that place and that kind of people. And we loose sense of the fact that God has brought us to a new time and a new place and to be among a new kind of people. Or maybe we get so homesick that we try to turn this new world into the old one – and we loose sense of the fact that that was not what God brought us here to do … we forget that we are here in the present age to be a blessing.

Abram was 75 years old when he heard the voice of God, and when he answered it. And because he trusted in God – even though he had no evidence to that this was a reasonable thing for a man of his age to be doing – Paul tells us his faith was reckoned as righteousness.

And that’s what faith is, I think: to find yourself called to a strange time and place and among strange people … and to be there with them … to interact with them … to engage in commerce with them … and to allow God to use you as a blessing to them.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

March 6, 2011

Transfiguration of the Lord Sunday

 

Ex. 24:12-18

Matt. 17:1-9

 

Prayer of Illumination:  O God, in the transfiguration of your Son, you confirmed the mystery of our faith by the witness of Moses and Elijah. This morning, take us once again to the mountaintop, take away the scales from our eyes, and reveal the light of your truth to us so that it will renew our faith and we will bring your grace to all the world. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

 

          Something odd is always happening on top of a mountain in the Gospel of Matthew! Near the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is taken to the top of a very high mountain where he is tempted by the devil … later, a great crowd follows Jesus up another mountain where he preaches a sermon that is not quite what people expect, saying to them: “You have heard it said … but I say unto you.” Much later, sitting on the Mount of Olives, Jesus begins to tell his disciples of the coming of the kingdom of heaven and the signs they are to look for signifying the end of the present age and the Second Coming. And then finally, in the last chapter after the resurrection, Christ brings his disciples to yet another mountain, where he gives them the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and leaving them with one final promise: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

            A mountain in the Book of Matthew comes to signify a place where something sacred happens … a place where the Divine meets the mundane … a place where common, ordinary people encounter spirits and supernatural beings … a place where the awareness of disciples can be heightened so they can be given holy instruction.

And this is true, not only in the Gospel of Matthew, but it’s also true in most any other culture or time or religion. The Navajo have long held the Black Mountains in Arizona were sacred to their people and culture … it was on the top of a mountain in ancient Persia that the prophet Zarathustra came to the realization that there was only one God … and in the reading from Exodus, Moses goes up to a mountain where he will encounter God for forty days and forty nights. Always something out of the ordinary happens on top of a mountain.

So when Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain, you know something special is about to happen! But what was it on that day that frightened them so? What would leave them trembling with fear, unable to speak, and cowering on the ground?

Well, it wasn’t what you’d think! It wasn’t the sudden appearance of Moses and Elijah standing and talking to Jesus … and it wasn’t the transfiguration of Jesus – his face shinning like the sun and his clothes becoming blindingly brilliant! In fact, Peter, James, and John seem to be overjoyed by all this! This is good news! And Peter – as he usually does, knows exactly what to do: “Lord, it is good that we came with you today. Here, let me handle everything! We will build three dwellings: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

No, Jesus’ transfiguration and the sudden appearance of two men long known to be dead are not what scare the disciples. They must really be brave men because these things would certainly scare me! Especially the appearance of two dead men! And this leads us to the question of: why Moses and Elijah? Why not someone else? Why not king David, Jesus’ ancestor? Why not Adam, since Jesus – according to Paul, is the second Adam?

Moses appears because he represents the Law. On this morning’s bulletin cover is a contemporary drawing of the transfiguration composed by a Latino artist, and it’s easy for you to tell which one of the six figures is Moses. He’s the one carrying the tablets of the ten commandments. So, the one carrying the scroll has to be Elijah, who represents the prophets. Their appearance with Christ proves Christ’s earlier statement in the Sermon on the Mount that he came not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfill them. Moses and Elijah also died very mysterious deaths … both of them being taken away from the earth by the hand of God … and Christ, too, will ascend directly into heaven.

But most importantly, Moses and Elijah both died before their ministry and their mission had been completed … they both have to hand-off their ministry to their disciples to carry-on after them: Moses to Joshua, and Elijah to Elisha. And Jesus, too, will have to hand off his ministry to his disciples – to Peter, James and John … to you and to me.

But none of these things are what frighten the disciples. What frightens them is what happens after these things while they are still making their plans to erect shrines and possibly live on the top of the mountain forever. They are confronted with the awesome majesty of God. A bright cloud suddenly comes over them and a voice from the cloud speaks to them, saying: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased,” and then they are given a command, “listen to him!”

Listen to him! To listen to Jesus is not just to hear what he has to say … to listen to Jesus implies following him and doing what he commands. You might hear what Jesus has to say … you might even be able to repeat everything he has said verbatim. But if you don’t follow him and do what he commands, then you have not listened to him.  And to listen to Jesus is to undertake some risky discipleship! In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ has told us: “You have hear that it was said … but I say unto you: turn the other cheek … love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you … do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but instead store up treasures in heaven.” And then just nine verses before today’s scripture lesson on the transfiguration, Jesus tells us: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The disciples are confronted by the awesome grace of God. No wonder they tremble in fear! They are faced with a man who is going to risk everything for love! He has been their teacher, their rabbi … he has taught them many lessons worthy of their consideration! But now everything has been changed … he has been revealed as the Son of God … in him is the grace of God which is our salvation … and in him is the love of the Father that brings that grace down to earth.

A lot of theologians have tried to define the concept of God’s grace: what it is, where it comes from and what it means for us. But another Gospel, the Gospel of John, sums it up most simply: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

And it is the sudden realization of this that causes the disciples to tremble in so much fear. And they also tremble because they realize that this mission of grace is what Jesus intends to hand-off to them … that he also intends to hand off to us … take up your cross and follow me.  

Grace is an awesome responsibility of discipleship. It requires of us the same sacrifice that Christ made: it demands our life. But more importantly, it demands much more than our lives … it demands our love. It was because of love that Christ came into this world to save it … it was because of love that the church was established … and it is because of love that the church perseveres in this age.

In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

First Presbyterian Church of Elberton

Feb. 27, 2011

8^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Isaiah 49:8-16a

Matt. 6:24-34

 

Prayer of Illumination:  Loving God, who has given to us everything we need to provide not only for ourselves but for others too, we thank you for this tremendous gift and this obligation. Open our hearts and minds to your Word this morning, so that we can understand how you would want us to live in this world full of worries. We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

 

            Jesus tells us not to worry!

            The Middle East is in turmoil ... previously stable governments are being toppled or are in danger of being toppled … the price of oil shoots to over $100 a barrel, driving up the cost of everything else, including food! And Jesus tells us not to worry!

And a lot of this same turmoil has now hit the Midwest and our nation’s capital! Workers are on strike … congress considers shutting down the federal government … and compromise appears to be elusive! And Jesus says, “fear not!”

            But we do worry about tomorrow – especially in times like these! And we tend to be more than just a little suspicious of someone who tells us not to worry … we wonder if they’re really in touch with reality … if they really know what’s going on … we wonder that they’ve been drinking a little too much lately. And that’s one way not to worry – drown your worries in alcohol or drugs. Another way to not worry is through willful ignorance – don’t watch the news … don’t read the papers … don’t keep up with what’s going on because you don’t really want to know … it’s all bad news … it just makes you depressed to hear all about it!

            But when Jesus says, “do not worry”, he’s not suggesting that we employ one of the two usual ways that we often use to escape worry: blissful drunkenness or blissful ignorance. I think Jesus is concerned about something much deeper … he’s concerned about a profound question about who we are and whose we are … who we belong to. You see, that’s how he starts off this section of his Sermon on the Mount … by telling us “No one can serve two masters … you will either hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other.” It’s about Lordship … it’s about the question: Who’s Lord of your life?

            Last week, when we talked about Lordship, we talked about what a radical claim it was to proclaim: “Christ is Lord!” We said it was radical because it challenges us every day to think about: Who do I follow? Do I follow Jesus? Or do I follow some other person, or ideology, or some other path? Who was Lord of my life was a question of obedience. But Jesus tells us today that who is Lord of our lives is not just a question of obedience, it’s also a question of: Who’s gonna take care of you?

            Now why that’s a question of Lordship is not so easily understood in our time as it was in Jesus’. We live in a much different world today than did Jesus and his followers … in most ways I think ours is a far more humane and a better world … but in others it can be far more brutal. And one of the ways that ours can be more brutal is in the relationship between labor and management. You see, employers today, have no duty beyond the minimum required by Federal and state laws … to pay workers a minimum wage, not necessarily a living wage but at least a minimum one … to respect certain rights within the workplace … that they at least be partially compensated for on the job injuries and provided unemployment compensation. But beyond those things, employers really have no interest in caring for their workers … in providing them health care … in making sure that they earn enough to feed their family and have a decent home and decent clothes to wear. Ironically, under the system of slavery, which overall was far more brutal, masters at least had an economic interest in caring for their slaves … in making sure they were well fed and clothed and sheltered, and when the slaves got sick, the doctor was called.

            So, for the people who are listening to Jesus give this sermon, the question of Lordship is not just a question of: Who are you going to take orders from? but also Who are you going to let take care of you?

            That’s a tough decision for us Americans. We really don’t like other people taking care of us. We take pride in taking care of ourselves … we pity those who have to have someone else take care of them. At the end of Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar named Desire, Blanche Dubois has this famous line that I’m sure you all remember. She says (I’m sorry that I can’t say it like Vivien Leigh does in the movie), “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” And we hear that, and most of us feel sorry for the poor woman … she’s come to the end of her rope, she’s had a mental breakdown … we hope that she can get some help … get back up on her feet again and get back to taking care of herself once again.

            The American ideal is the “self made man.” We admire the pioneers who settled the American west, who left the comforts of the East to strike out on their own … taking their family, a covered wagon and a few possessions … finding a piece of land and farming it. They built their own homes, grew their food, made their own clothes, and were probably as about as self-sufficient as anyone ever was in the entire history of humankind. And we imagine ourselves sort-of like that: self sufficient, self-sustaining, self made.

            But if the truth were to be made known, the reality is: we are much closer to Blanche Dubois than we are to the American myth of the self-made man … and we’ve probably always have been throughout the history of our nation, whether we want to admit that or not. We have always been a people who were interdependent upon one another. Who among us today grows all of their own food? Some of you may have vegetable gardens, but am I correct in saying you probably don’t grow all of the food that you eat? If we want fresh fruits and vegetables in the offseason, aren’t we dependent on the farmers and orchard growers south of the Equator? The coffee we drink every morning is grown and picked for us every day by campesinos in Central and South America. The clothes we wear are probably made there too … and if not there then in Asia or the South Pacific. And the people who build our homes come from all over the world … they work as bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians … all for an opportunity … an opportunity to leave behind a life where they were one of the have-nots and take part in economic system they believe is far better and far more egalitarian than what they left behind. A lot of different hands prepare our food, weave our clothes, and build our homes. They are black hands, brown hands and white hands. The people speak English, Spanish or Bengali. We should be thankful for the hands and the people that bring us food, shelter and clothing.

And we live in such an interdependent world out of sheer necessity. Who among us has time to grow all of our food anymore? Who in America makes all their own clothes, anymore? Who builds their own homes by the sweat of their own brow or the strength of their own hands? …Other than the Amish! But even they work together in community. None of them would dare profess to be “self-made” or even consider it to be a virtue.

You know, modern life is far too complicated and too busy for any of us to be truly “self-made!” We live in a world where we are interdependent upon one another because we have to be! But I also think that’s the way God wants it to be, too! God wants us to depend on one another, because God wants community! All this stuff about being “self-made” and independent – I think all that’s antithetical to the gospel that Jesus is preaching. Jesus teaches us to love one another … to take care of one another … that we are responsible for one another. If we focus on being “self-made” and independent – isn’t that another form of idolatry? Isn’t that us trying to be our own masters instead of letting Jesus be Lord of our lives?

            Now, I tell you all this stuff about interdependence because I want to impress upon you that – even though Jesus is speaking to an audience that lives under a very different culture and economic system than we do – his words are just as relevant to us today and the context in which we live. He tells us not to worry about what we will eat, or drink, or even what we will wear … and these words anticipate something that he is going to tell us much later in the Gospel of Matthew, when he tells his disciples the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.

‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;  ³⁵ for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,  ³⁶ I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Matthew 25:34-36  

 

In the community to which God is calling us, people take care of one another’s needs. The early church understood this literally. In the Book of Acts  we read that: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the feet of the apostles and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (Acts 4:34-36)

 You see, the kind of interdependence that is coming to characterize the global economic system, I think, is a step in the right direction. It’s not the kingdom of heaven, not by a long shot. The kind of community and interdependence God is calling us to is far more egalitarian, far less exploitative, and cares far more for creation than what human beings can ever achieve on their own. Only Christ Jesus can truly bring about the Kingdom of Heaven…, but we are certainly called to participate with him in that work.

            In parting, let me leave you with this story – a parable that Myong once told me that she learned from her childhood in Korea. There was a man who wanted to know what the difference was between heaven and hell. So, one night in a dream, St. Peter took him on a little tour. They went to visit hell, first. In hell he saw a great banquet table … full of the finest and most delicious foods the man had ever seen. But all the people had to eat with were these five foot long chopsticks! There was no way they could pick up the food with these chopsticks and feed themselves! So the people were frustrated and angry and half starved. Next they went to heaven, and he saw the same thing: a huge banquet table full of the same find foods and the same five foot long chopsticks. The only difference was, in heaven, the people fed each other!

            Amen!

Proclamation of the Word

Rev. Mike Woods

FPCE

Feb. 20, 2011

7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

 

Lev. 19:1-2, 9-18

Matt. 5:38-48

 

 

 

            Looking at the Book of Confessions is like looking at a family photo album.

In the Book of Confessions we have ten confessions – beginning with the Nicene Creed which is the oldest of our confessions … to the Apostles’ Creed which is the one we are most familiar with … to the confessions that were written during the time of the Protestant Reformation: the Scots Confession, the Second Helvetic, Heidelberg, and Westminster … to our modern confessions: Barmen, the Confession of 1967 and the Brief Statement of Faith. Soon our presbytery will discuss whether or not to adopt an eleventh creed: the Belhar Confession.

Now we have so many confessions because they were all written at different points in time … they address different issues the church faced at different points of its history. So, the Book of Confessions is like a family photo album because you usually arrange the pictures chronologically, don’t you? You start with the pictures of your children when they were just babies … and you were a proud parent … and you felt that everything they did had to be documented on 35mm film. So you have pictures of their first dirty diaper, their first Christmas, their first birthday party. … And they get older and bigger as you turn the pages … Pretty soon they’re toddlers and you have pictures of them running and playing … then they go to preschool and kindergarten … then to grade school, middle school high school and college. And the album tells a story … a story of lives lived together as a single family. You see your children go from infancy to adulthood … you see how their bodies changed … you see how your own bodies have changed!

And the Book of Confessions is like that because we can see how the body of Christ has changed over the course of its 2000 year history … we can see how it’s grown from infancy to where it is now … we can see how the body of Christ has grown and changed over the millennia. Now, some of the confessions are very poetic, they have a rhythm and a meter that make them easy to memorize … but some of them are long treatises on systematic theology and are written in a very scholarly and intellectual style. All of them address very different issues … they have very different concerns … and they express those concerns in a variety of ways. They state what we believe and how we ought to live our lives in accordance to what we believe.

But none of those confessions are as radical or as profound as what is probably the oldest Christian Confession … that very simple but profound statement that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Those four words constitute the first of the church’s confessions. We don’t include it in the Book of Confessions because its already in the Bible. All of our other confessions are predicated with that first statement of belief, that Christ is Lord, in order to say whatever it is they are going to say. The entire history of the church has really been an exploration of what it means to say that “Christ is Lord.”

And because it’s so simple a statement, I think we may have forgotten just how radical a claim it really was for the early Christian church to make. Think about what it must have meant, in the first century, for a slave to proclaim, “Christ is Lord.” Because if Christ is your Lord, then your master – the man who legally owns you according to the laws of the Roman Empire – no longer is, because no one can serve two masters. And if you’re a woman and you say, “Christ is Lord,” then your husband is not. And even if you’re a free citizen of Rome and you proclaim, “Christ is Lord”, then that means Caesar is not! No wonder Paul says to us in his letters “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)  The radical-ness of that claim that Christ is Lord frees us from slavery to the lords of this world who would lay claim to our lives.

Today it is the same. When we utter the words that “Christ is Lord,” we’re not using words lightly … we are making a claim that has profound implications upon our lives. If Christ is Lord of my life, then I am not … if Christ is Lord, then no political party can ever be … if Christ is Lord, then money, philosophies, ideologies, or any of the things in this life that we so easily give our lives over to should have any kind of control or exert any kind of influence over us … if Christ is Lord.

But in spite of that confession, we too easily give ourselves over to other lords: money, drugs, alcohol, work, political ideologies of the right or the left or even of the center. We make idols of them … we worship them.

“Who is lord in your life?” the scriptures this morning ask us. That’s an important question we have to answer this day and time. Many years ago, Bob Dylan wrote a song called “Gotta Serve Somebody.” He sang: “You may be a construction worker working on a home / You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome / You might own guns and you might even own tanks / You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks / But you’re gonna have to serve somebody / Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord / But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Who is lord in our lives? Whom do we follow? Do we follow Jesus or do we follow other lords?

“I am the Lord your God,” is the refrain we read in Leviticus. The children of Israel have been freed from captivity in Egypt … their freedom has been won at a great cost … they are in debt to the one who has purchased and won that freedom. But don’t think for a minute that the children of Israel have been rescued from one form of slavery only to be held captive in another. The freedom God has won for them is a true freedom … they have been liberated. But what they owe to God for that freedom is a duty to use that freedom responsibly ... in particular, a duty to ensure that the way they live doesn’t impose slavery on others … in short, God requires they live in such a way that they don’t become the kind of harsh task masters they were freed from. “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of the field … you shall not strip your vineyard bare … you shall leave them for the poor and alien…. You shall not render an unjust judgment … you shall not show partiality … you shall not profit from the hardship of others … but you shall do justice by everyone; for I am the Lord your God … You shall be holy as I am holy.”

 

You know, it’s easy for us to say, “Christ is Lord.” But do we really live it? Or do we reap to the very edges of our fields? Do we strip our vineyards bare? Congress always seems to find enough money to grant the wealthiest Americans a generous tax cut, but there never seems to be enough for heating assistance for the elderly … or for Medicaid or Medicare … or to pay teachers a decent salary. Banks and corporations – in a sure sign that the economy is indeed improving – have started again to give their CEO’s million dollar bonuses, but they still haven’t started hiring again … unemployment remains entirely too high. And in our individual lives, do we take all the gleanings from the field? If we have a little money left over at the end of the month – and I know that’s difficult in this economy – what do we do with it? Do we spend it on ourselves? Do we buy something for ourselves that we really want but really don’t need … that we already have too much of? Or do we remember the poor?

And how do we treat the aliens who live among us? Do we do justice to all people? Are we impartial in our judgments? … without regard to race, gender, or status?

If someone strikes us on one cheek do we turn the other? That’s been a big challenge for us Auburn fans this past week. You may have heard that it was revealed someone poisoned the oak trees that have stood at Toomer’s Corner for over 130 years. The Auburn community has been outraged over this senseless act of violence. How do we respond? Some are demanding some form of payback! But if Christ is, indeed, Lord of our lives, then there is no question as to how we ought to respond. Immediately following the incident, the President of the University issued a statement. He asked members of the Auburn Family to "continue to be 'All In' in upholding (the university’s) reputation for class" and not allow anger to be expressed inappropriately or undeservedly. "It is understandable,” he said “to feel outrage in reaction to a malicious act of vandalism. However, we should live up to … the beliefs expressed in our Auburn Creed.” That creed – that confession if you will – says in part that we believe “in obedience to the law because it protects the rights of all” and that we can best serve our nation by (and here it quotes the passage from Micah 6:8) “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with (our) God.”

 

The funny thing about photo albums is that – in addition to seeing how so much has changed over the years – you also see how some things have remained the same. Children grow up … they get bigger … the clothes they wear change in fashion … but they’re always the same kids. The houses you might see in those pages may change as the family moves from one location to another, but they always remain a “home.”

We may adopt new confessions from time-to-time … we may alter the language of some of the older confessions to be more “gender inclusive” or to reflect a more contemporary understanding of what the scriptures are saying to us. But Christ is Lord in every one of them! And as long as we confess Christ to be Lord of our lives, no other lords can lay any claim over us.

Thanks be to God! Amen.