When God Shows Up

Genesis 18: 1-15 & Romans 12: 2, 9-15
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 14 September 2008

The text isn’t clear if Yahweh was alone or had three men, possibly angels, with him, for it says both. Maybe in the heat of the sun his sight was blurred and it looked like three men appeared. The first eight verses of Genesis18 move along at a fast clip. Abraham offers water to wash their feet and allows them to rest. He offers a little bread to provide rest for their ongoing journey, never presuming that he is the object of their visit. He does everything to make his guests feel welcome, unhurried, relaxed. These are all understated expressions of hospitality, but then Abraham throws the ovens in the kitchen on full heat. Behind the scenes he’s sending everyone off to mix the flour (6.5 pounds worth of flour) and knead the bread and tells Sarah to put a cake in the oven. Abraham quickly runs off to the herd to get a calf – tender and good – and gives it to the servant to prepare it. Then they fetch something to drink. All this flurry of activity is going on, in the background, while Abraham provides an enormous feast for his guests and makes it look easy. It is a feast for Yahweh and friends.

We’re drawn in this text to see Abraham’s generosity and welcome. This is because in Abraham’s world hospitality was the primary act of a civilized people. Abraham and Sarah’s actions are in sharp contrast with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in the next chapter who were not hospitable to their guests, which was the sin of these cities was inhospitality. Not so with Abraham and Sarah.

After they ate the guests want to speak with Sarah, who was in the tent. Women probably did not eat with men and were kept separate. One man says to Abraham that when he returns next year Sarah will be pregnant and have a son. Sarah, overhearing the conversation from the tent, begins to laugh to herself about the whole affair. I’m sure she got a pretty good laugh out that prediction. But Yahweh wasn’t laughing. Yahweh says to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for Yahweh? At the set time I will return to you in due season and Sarah shall have a son.” Then Sarah comes out of the tent and denies it, “I didn’t laugh,” for by this time she was afraid. Then Yahweh said, “Oh yes, you did.”

This is an extremely old story, definitive for the Hebrew people and all those blessed through the faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah – both Muslims and Christians. Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggeman makes the strong case that everything in this narrative revolves around this pivotal question –“Is anything too hard for Yahweh?” It might even be the fundamental question of the Bible. It is God’s question directed right at us: Is there anything too hard for Yahweh? Be careful how you answer this question. To say, Yes, then God is not God; to say, No, then we need to be open to something different taking place.

A lot depends upon our receptivity, doesn’t it? It depends upon our willingness to be open. A lot depends upon our willingness to welcome – well, God. Indeed, there is a link between being hospitable to the stranger and entertaining the presence of God. There is a connection between welcoming the stranger and welcoming God. There’s a link between receiving guests and receiving God and receiving a blessing.

This text provides a remarkable window into the custom of hospitality in the desert cultures. But it’s more than just social etiquette. It’s about the way we make space for the other, for the stranger; for it tells us something about how open we are when God shows up in our lives.[1] When God shows up, unannounced and unexpected, how will we respond, will we welcome what God has to say? One way the Hebrews and early Christians prepared themselves to welcome the presence of God was to make sure they were really hospitable to everyone. This is because God just might show up on your doorstep in the stranger – or the strange. Either way, what are you going to do?

In her recent book, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith, notes that one of the ten signposts of churches experiencing renewal is its approach toward hospitality. It doesn’t mean that such churches have “welcoming committees” or hospitality programs, “where friendliness seems little more than a phony act to get newcomers to join the church.” We’re not talking about a religious Welcome Wagon, that emerged in the 1960s, which, “for all its friendliness, was essentially a way to promote certain stores and products.” Hospitality is not a code word for “promotion,” with the church as the primary product, where it becomes “an instrument used for another end: to sign people up as pledging members.”[2]

Bass is spot-on when she writes, “True Christian hospitality is not a recruitment strategy designed to manipulate strangesr into church membership. Rather, it is a central practice of the Christian faith – something Christians are called to do for the sake of that thing itself.”[3] It has its roots in desert, nomadic cultures where each guest was honored, given respect, cared for, fed, sheltered, in order for one to continue on their journey. It was critical in a culture full of nomads, sojourners and seekers, traders in traveling caravans trying to make a living, and religious pilgrims – sounds a lot like us.

Hospitality was practiced by early Christians (you can hear it here in Romans 12) to such a degree that even the Romans were amazed and in awe. Philoxenos, love, do not fear the stranger, Paul urged. Not xenophobia (the fear of the stranger), but philoxenos, the love of the stranger, the foreigner. That’s what Christians do. They welcomed the stranger because they knew themselves welcomed by God. They welcomed the stranger because they believed the face of the other just might be the face of God. You never know who is going to show up at the flap of your tent.

When the Roman Empire finally collapsed amid social chaos and violence, it was Saint Benedict (c. 480-c.547) who formed monasteries in the 6th century to provide refuge, communities commissioned to “receive guests as Christ.” The abbey I visited in New Mexico on the sabbatical, Christ in the Desert Abbey, is a Benedictine community that receives every guest as Christ.

Hospitality is not a program or a technique. It’s a way of life that stands at the core of who we are, who we bear the name of Christ. It flows from our hearts. This is something we as a church have spent a lot of time talking about over the last couple of years. The capital campaign renovations are being done within the theological context of hospitality. But it’s an ongoing journey for us. There’s always room for growth in this area. We must continually ask: how can we deepen our expression of hospitality? This is a question for our elders, deacons, and trustees, as well as for all of us. We might think we are being hospitable, but is that how people think and feel when they meet us? Do they see Christ in us? Do we see Christ in them? Do we see Christ in one another?

This week I thought about all the people who come through the church and the Church House who are not part of this faith community. Do they see Christ in us? Do we welcome them as we would the Lord? Consider all the groups that meet here: Al-Anon, martial arts groups, Scottish Country dancers on Monday nights in the gym, the Scouts; the people who come to the counseling center in the Church House. Think about all the children in our Child Care Center and their parents dropping up and pickup their children every day. Or think of all the contractors who are on site every day. Sure, we’re paying them, but who are they? What do they see in us? Do they see Christ in us? Do we see Christ in them? One contractor came up to me this week and asked me to pray for close friends of theirs who have lost a parent, a child, and now their second child is seriously ill. What an unbearable burden to carry. I said I would pray and that we would pray.

Is all this risky? Of course. The Christian life is risky. It means we have to be vulnerable. It means bringing people into the space where we live, of entering into our thoughts and hearts. It means bringing people close and not keeping them at arms length. If we don’t do this, how else is true community going to take place?

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) once said, “When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests…Then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of unity.”[4] In a post-9-11 world, filled with hate-filled extremism, the widening clash between civilizations, political polarization, and vilification of others with differing outlooks, opinions, and experiences, the important of Christian hospitality becomes all the more critical in the church. We are called to model a different way of being that can’t be found in the world. The work we’ve been given to do becomes all the more essential.

Being hospitable is still the work of a civilized people. To do otherwise is to miss an opportunity to welcome God. To do otherwise is to miss an opportunity to receive a blessing.

[1] Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin: “The classic sign of God’s mystery is to entertain, to make room for the other.” Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.
[2] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith (HarperOne, 2007), 77-87.
[3] Bass, 81ff. Emphasis added.
[4] Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Doubleday, 1975), cited in Bass, 86.


The above image, an icon by Andrei Rublev (1360-1430), depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre, often referred to as the Old Testament Trinity, but more aptly called the Hospitality of Abraham.

A Community Formed by Forgiveness

Matthew 18: 15-22
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 7th September 2008

Over the recent sabbatical I discovered the works of the contemporary poet, Stephen Dunn. In one poem he reflects upon his daughter’s experience attending a summer Vacation Bible Church. It’s called “At the Smithville Methodist Church.” Dunn and his wife are basically agnostic, skeptical about religion in general and not sure what to make of their daughter’s emerging faith. In the end, they are humbled by it. Here’s how he captures it in verse:

It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren't
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.

OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing "Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so,"
it was time to talk. Could we say Jesus

doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.

It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,

that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief
to a child,

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story nearly as good.
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out

like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah

and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what's comic, what's serious.

Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to your child "Evolution loves you."
The story stinks
of extinction and nothing

exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,

occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.[1]

What is this “wonderful story” of which Dunn is so envious? How do you sum up the Christian story? I’m not exactly sure there’s one story we tell. The story is Jesus and Jesus is the story of God’s love. But how do we tell this story? It’s really more like a multi-faceted-gemstone-kind-of-story. There are many aspects to it and we approach it from many perspectives and angles.

It seems to me that everything we do in a church is grounded in the belief that we have a story for our children. Our worship, our fellowship, our community around this table are all because we have a wonderful story for our children. Our ministries of sympathy, service, and witness, our educational and missional aims are all because of this story. Even all the dust and debris, the torn up floors and demolished walls around here, the entirety of our $1.5 million renovation project are all because of this wondrous story.

There are plenty of great stories to shape the lives of our children, but what makes this story different is the way it speaks to the “why” question. Evolution , for example, speaks to the “how” question. How we got here. But evolution doesn’t love you. The Christian story is less about how we came to be, then why. I believe in evolution, of course, but our job in the church is to speak to the question why. Parents can tell them how (in time), how they came to be, but the deeper more profound question of why? Why do they exist? Why do we exist? Our story that puts them – and us – into this deeply disturbing and scary, yet wildly wondrous and glorious world – puts them and us into this amazing world with meaning, purpose, love, and grace. The story tells them why they exist. It gives them and us a song to sing and sanctifies their lives and ours, and makes them holy. They can’t discover this on their own; neither can we. It doesn’t emerge from the depths of our psyche when we’re alone awake at night and fearful. The story tells us that we are loved more than we could ever possibly imagine, that we’re not alone, that Jesus is present within us and among us.

For Matthew here, one significant part of the gospel story is forgiveness. Forgiveness, which, of course, is related to God’s love and grace. Forgiveness stands at the center of the gospel narrative, the church’s story.

However, neither Jesus nor Matthew had any romantic illusions about the nature of the church. “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love,” yet painful breaks can occur in our relationships. “We are one in the Spirit,” yet cruel words and thoughtless actions can separate us from each other. “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,” but there’s plenty to threaten the stability of even the strongest of churches.[2]

Matthew tells us how to live together. Work it out. Seek reconciliation. Try to make amends. Reach out. Why? Because wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name he’s there too. When we’re quick to accuse and judge and shun someone from community, remember that Christ is among us, and in the other we want to shun. By focusing on Jesus in the center of the community we remember it’s not about us; the church doesn’t exist for us we exist for the church; God doesn’t exist for us, we exist for us. The focus on Christ draws us out of our isolation and allows us to live together.

But Peter, always the practical one says, “Okay, Lord, fine. Sounds great in theory. But just tell me the minimum number of times I have to forgive so I know when I don’t have to forgive any more and throw that person out of the church.” Peter wants to put a limit on the generosity of grace. But if we’re like him, then we really don’t understand what it feels like to be forgiven, to know grace. Seventy-seven times. Don’t count. Don’t keep track. Just keep on doing it. Why?There can be no community without forgiveness.

Now it’s possible to just tell or teach the story of forgiveness without being shaped by it. We can teach our children how they ought to forgive, but ignore it ourselves. However, this is not just a story we teach or tell (and when we do, we’ve missed the point). It’s a story we experience even as we tell it because already we’re in it, we’re within the narrative of God’s grace. We can tell the influence of the story by the difference it makes in our lives – how followers of Jesus relate to others, especially when the family of Jesus gathers and tries to be faithful together.

Knowing the undeserved and unearned forgiveness of God becomes the cornerstone of the Christian experience and sits at the center of who we are. It’s embodied in the Table. On the Sunday I was worshipping at Iona Abbey, a long Communion Table was set up right down the center of the nave. I wish we could do the same in our church, but our aisle is too narrow. It’s a powerful way to express that the Table sits at the center of what we do and we worship around it. That’s why Jesus gives it to us, and even why John Calvin (1509-1564) wanted Communion served every Sunday in Geneva, because it helps to remind us that Christ is among us and within.

He makes tangible the story of God’s forgiving love. And this meal is offered again and again and again in the hope that someday we’ll finally get it – that we and our children will know we’re forgiven in the eyes of God and then, in the words of Paul Tillich (1886-1965), “accept our acceptance.”[3] People long to know they’re forgiven, whether they believe in God or not. Such is the depth of guilt so many carry around with them. We know there’s nothing that can separate us from God (Romans 8). We can live from within this story.

To know we’ve been forgiven by God, but withhold forgiveness toward others is, in the end to be ungrateful. To know we’re forgiven, yet withhold forgiveness toward ourselves is to be ungrateful. But with grateful hearts, accepting God’s forgiveness at the Table, we can rejoice, we can jump up and down – even Presbyterians – singing hallelujahs, beaming all the way home.

[1] Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994), 183-184.
[2] Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 209.
[3] Paul Tillich, from his sermon, “You Are Accepted,” Shaking the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955).

Running for More than Celery

Isaiah 40: 21-31 & 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 31st August 2008

For decades, Professor Donald Macleod taught preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. I had occasion to know him well, even though he retired by the time I arrived on campus in the late 1980s. He died last year, well into his 90s. He retired to Charlestown and attended worship at Catonsville Presbyterian, including the Sunday I candidated here in June 1999. He was also Dr. Jewett’s preaching professor when he was a student at Princeton.

Dr. Mac, as he was known, liked to say that a sermon title should get your attention. It should cause you to take notice while sitting on the bus going down Fifth Avenue in New York City, enticing you to satisfy your curiosity by attending worship on Sunday. He was referring to the sign-board of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. I’m not sure what he would say about my title. I’ve wondered what folks driving along Frederick Road have been thinking all week. You’re probably wondering — what kind of sermon title is that?

All the eyes of the world turned to China a few weeks ago for the Beijing Olympics. Athletes from around the world descended upon that most ancient of cities to fulfill their dreams of being a medal winner, to stand on the winners’ platform, hearing their country’s national anthem, as the flag of the winning nation rises above them. It’s the part of the pay-off, the prize for years of sweat and tears.

The opening ceremony two weeks ago, my favorite part of the Olympics, was spectacular, majestic, and uplifting. All the participant nations marched in the stadium so full of joy, anticipation, and hope. I have a great deal of respect for them, primarily because I was never, ever good at anything athletic, after many tries. But more than that, you have to respect their dedication, discipline, and drive.

There are plenty of people who feel that the Olympics have become one big consumer-driven extravaganza in which Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are the real winners, where the golden arches are more important than gold medallions. The media was criticized for praising a country’s culture and heritage, while relatively silent on the contemporary human rights abuses.

But consider all those athletes from around the world gathered together for the opening ceremonies. Just think of all the hours of training they represent. It is quite amazing. Think of Michael Phelps from Maryland, alone, or Usain Bolt from Jamaica. They didn’t get to be so good and fast by just showing up at the pool or track whenever they felt like it. Just think of what these athletes have been through, how they have trained their bodies, of muscles that needed to be stretched, then broken, then healed again in order for growth and strength to occur, of minds that need to be sharp, clear, focused; all this must be done for years in order to reach this level of excellence. Consider their dedication, their discipline, and their drive.

Yes, consider their dedication, their discipline, their drive – says Paul! – because the same characteristics are essential for the Christian life.
Nothing less than years of training,
of endurance and sacrifice,
of lives that are stretched and sometimes broken and
then healed, yielding growth and strength;
of minds that are sharp, clear, focused –
- yes, all this must be done for years after many setbacks,
- failures, and disappointments, in order to reach a level of excellence, of reaching what Paul calls “mature”
Christianity, of running in love’s “still more excellent
way (1 Corinthians 13).”

The only goal, same for everyone, is the love of Christ.
The characteristics and skills of being an athlete are not dissimilar to what’s involved in following Jesus.

Paul loved to use athletic metaphors throughout his epistles. From his jail cell in Rome, Paul wrote to the Philippians, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).” The image is that of a runner who has his eyes set on the finish line,
body straining forward toward the goal,
not looking back or to the side, not worrying about what
others are doing,
mind focused, reaching for that prize
which is the upward call of God,
this God who is calling to set our sights higher and
broader in Christ,
to set our eyes on him and them give him your all.
Set your eyes on Christ and then literally throw yourself toward him, toward the finish.

What’s significant about this passage is that the prize is not, as we might think, living happily ever after with God. Instead, the prize is the call and the call of God is the prize. The prize is not getting to heaven. And everyone who has been baptized is called. What is the call, what is the prize?

It’s the prize of living a life that is pressed into the service
of someone and something higher than oneself – beyond
egotism and selfishness.

It’s the prize of living a life that is heaven-bent on achieving, straining after the glory of God in all that we do. The prize comes when we live in conformity with what God wills for us. The prize is the immeasurable pleasure that comes when we’re running this way.

Do you remember the movie “Chariots of Fire”? It’s the true story of the Scottish Presbyterian missionary Eric Liddell (1902-1945) and the English Jewish Cambridge student Harold Abrahams (1899-1978) who ran for Great Britain at the 1924 Olympiad in Paris. It is one of my favorite movies. The well-known opening beach scene was filmed at 4:00 a.m. in St. Andrews, Scotland; it is actually the West Sands of St. Andrews, a place I know very well. (If you look closely you can see the house where I stay in St. Andrews, including over the sabbatical.) There’s a scene in the movie when Eric is preaching before a crowd after a qualifying event in Scotland. He says, “You came to see a race today. To see someone win. It happened to be me. But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it. I want to compare faith to running in a race. It's hard. It requires concentration of will, energy of soul. You experience elation when the winner breaks the tape - especially if you've got a bet on it. But how long does that last? You go home. Maybe your dinner's burnt. Maybe you haven't got a job. So who am I to say, ‘Believe, have faith,’ in the face of life's realities? I would like to give you something more permanent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way. And where does the power come from, to see the race to its end? From within. Jesus said, ‘Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you. If with all your hearts, you truly seek me, you shall ever surely find me.’ If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, then that is how you run a straight race.”

And Eric has to convince his sister Jenny that he’s going to stay in Scotland instead of returning to mission service in China. The two of them are walking near Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, talking. He feels called to train and compete and run for Scotland. She wants him to return with her to China. But he says he can’t. “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure. When I run, Jenny, I feel [God’s] pleasure.”[1]

You see – that’s the prize, the pleasure. Being a Christian isn’t easy. It’s tough. No one is perfect at it and no one does it alone. But in order to go for it, we have to be trained.

This is why the athletic metaphor is so useful for Paul. He didn’t just use it because it was helpful; he used it because his readers would have been familiar with these images, even as he was familiar with them. Athletic training and competition, like now, were integral to the educational, formational process of all children and young adults in Paul’s time. Then, like today, athletes were superstars. The Roman writer, Juvenal (c. First to Second Century), complained that teachers didn’t receive the kind of respect they deserved. In his Satire, he “bitterly calculates that musicians and popular athletes earn more in a day than the teacher does in a year.”[2] Sound familiar?

Paul writes to the Corinthians using athletic metaphors because he knows the Corinthians. Remember Paul founded the church in Corinth and spent a lot of time there. Paul knew that just down the road from Corinth were the massive track and fields of the Panhellenic (Greek) festivals in Isthmia.

We often think of the ancient Greek games being based in Olympia. The Olympian festival was the oldest and most prestigious. Hence our contemporary reference to the Olympic Games – although they were able to pull theirs off at a fraction of today’s cost, saving a lot on uniforms alone. But there were three other sites for these Panhellenic festivals: the Pythian festival held at Delphi, the Nemean festival held at Argos, and the Isthmian festival held at Corinth. They were also called “stephanitic” festivals; stephanos means “crown” or “wreath” referring to the prize awarded to the winner of each event. Each site offered a different kind of crown. At Olympia the winner received a wreath of wild olive, at Delphi a garland of bay leaves, at Nemea a wreath of fresh celery and at Isthmia a wreath of dry, wilted celery – yes, celery.[3]

When I was in Greece several years ago, I went to Isthmia; it is one of the more recent archeological digs in Greece. The site contains the remains of the temple of Poseidon, a theatre, and baths. Most amazing for us was to see the actual starting line for the track in the stadium – easily visible – along the starter’s pit behind the starting line. There’s a fascinating museum there which has a mosaic depicting a wilted celery wreath around an athlete’s brow and tied with a knot or ribbon behind the neck.[4] There are also large, stone tributes to many athletes with wreaths of wilted celery over their heads.

Now you might be wondering why I’m going on about celery. Because Paul does. Listen to this text again, imagine the people of Corinth listening to this letter, think of them walking down the road to Isthmia, seeing the athletic fields, observing the competition and games, watch how Paul used these everyday occurrences as a way to bring life to the gospel. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.” Hear the allusion to celery?

Those athletes are disciplining and training their bodies to go after a “perishable crown,” a wilted piece of celery! But what we’re training for, friends, is a crown that will not wilt, that is imperishable, that will last! Now, whether we will all be walking around in glory with crowns is beside the point – it’s a metaphor – the point is that the goal, the prize that we strive after and strain for as Christians is better than any athletic prize or any other prize given in this world subject to rust and decay and corruption.

What are you running for? Is the prize you’re after worthy of the race, especially if it’s a rat-race?

Unless we put the effort in, unless we are dedicated, disciplined, driven in our following of Christ, running the race that Christ sets before, trained in body and mind, then we run the risk of losing our crown. This doesn’t mean that our salvation is somehow in jeopardy. This is a metaphor. The point Paul is making here is that we can’t say we’re a Christian without following Christ, without demonstrating with your life the power of the gospel at work in you, without demonstrating the presence of the Risen Christ in us, without being a witness to the transforming power of God’s love in our lives. All of which were critical problems in the Corinthian church, where they were saying one thing on a Sunday and doing another the rest of the week, claiming to believe one thing only to have their actions betray them.

We can’t just talk the talk, we have to walk the walk. And we do it together. Someone got very mad at me once when I said you can’t be a Christian by yourself. It’s true. Being Christian requires others, it requires community. We need one another to run this race, to run the race with everything we have!
We can’t do it alone. Following Christ is not as easy as some think. It requires nothing less than the dedication, the discipline, and the drive of an athlete.
[1] “Chariots of Fire,” Engima Productions, 1981. Quotes from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082158/quotes
[2] Cited in Albert A. Bell, Jr. Exploring the New Testament World. Foreword by Bruce M. Metzger (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 239.
[3] See the review by Bernard Knox in The New York Times Book Review, August 8, 2004, of Nigel Spivey, The Ancient Olympics (Oxford, 2004) and Stephen G. Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics (Yale, 2004).
[4] Cf. Clyde E. Fant & Mitchell G. Reddish, A Guide to Biblical Sites in Greece and Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 44.

De Profundis: Out of the Depths

Psalm 130 & Luke 5: 1-11

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 24th August 2008

It’s good to be back in the pulpit this morning and seeing your smiling faces. I spent this week doing a lot of listening and getting brought up to speed on some of what’s been going on around here the last couple of months. I knew that my leaving, particularly at a critical time in the life of the church, just as we were about to completely transform the look of this building, both inside and outside, was generating just a little bit of stress and anxiety (okay, maybe a lot). But I had every confidence that the church would still be standing when I got back (and it is); that the renovations would proceed smoothly (and they are); and that you would be in very capable hands with the Session, Dorothy Boulton, Joan Berry, and Terry Schoener preaching most Sundays (and you definitely were). I wasn’t worried or concerned. I am extremely grateful to all of them, particularly Dorothy for carrying an extra burden of responsibility while I was away – and which she quickly placed back upon my shoulders. In my travels and conversations, I told folks that I was very proud of this congregation, because you embarked on this renovation in the midst of sabbatical, and that you told me to, gave me permission to go during this season. It was really very healthy – it spoke volumes about your trust in yourselves to do this, and I could trust you to make it happen. It made it clear that this renovation is not my vision, but yours; it’s not about me, but about you, it belongs to the soul of and souls within this congregation faithfully stepping out into the future God is preparing for us.

Listening this week to some of the stories, it’s clear that you discovered some new things about yourselves. It’s exciting to hear all that’s been going on and it’s great to see all the changes to the building. We’re being stretched with this renovation and perhaps no entity is feeling the stress and strain more than the staff of the Child Care Center as they open their doors tomorrow. Change produces stress and the stress perhaps reveals some of our weak points. Perhaps this is why we are reluctant to change, because we can’t stand the stress. But the change and the stress also call us to respond to these challenges with greater commitment and focus, they summon within us emotional and spiritual resources we didn’t think we had or have had to use in quite some time. I can’t help but think that we will be a healthier, stronger community for having lived through this. Transformation and growth are impossible without change and the stress that comes with it. The challenge in those moments is not allow fear to hinder the good that can come from change. Fear can destroy so much within us – it can kill our souls – and the soul of any church. Fear can hold us back, but Jesus always says to us, “Do not be afraid.” But Jesus also continues to say “Step out.” Or, as in this story in Luke, “Go deep.”

So what have I been up to? Over the next couple of months I will gradually share some of my experiences and discoveries. I can’t thank you enough for providing the time and space to disengage, to step away, to reconnect with myself and with God. I am extremely grateful for the time to reflect upon my life and my ministry. I’m thankful for your prayers, your support, your encouragement, and for really giving me space. Dorothy did an excellent job of keeping me in the dark about everything – that is, until last Monday.

As you know, the theme for the sabbatical was “a vast, broad, space,” a line taken from Job (36:16) describing life in the Spirit as a vast, broad, space where there is no cramping.[1] The hope was to make space in my schedule, my heart, my mind, my spirit for myself and for God. I was searching for breathing space, to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. And I hoped to go to places that were expansive, that were open and vast, to live in and near such places that would enlarge my soul and vision. I went to New Orleans and met with an author, an expert on dream analysis;[2] I went to a monastery in New Mexico; lived for a week in the Blue Ridge mountains in Northern Virginia, reading, writing, hiking; six weeks in Europe, spending almost a month in Scotland, including a week in Iona (one of the holiest places on the planet); a pilgrimage to see a painting I’ve wanted to see since I was in college, in a small museum in Colmar, France (just north of Basel); a brief time in Geneva before flying to Rome and spending more time there, going into the catacombs. (I felt like I was reversing the movement of Protestants, even the history of Christianity – Maryland, Edinburgh, London, Colmar, Basel, Geneva, Rome, right into the catacombs). I visited Pompeii, and spent a week on the Amalfi Coast; there was a week in New Jersey connecting with family and dear friends who were mentors of mine from my home church; then just last Friday, a quick visit to Houston to meet with James Hollis, a Jungian psychoanalyst, author, and director of the Jung Center in Houston. His books were a companion throughout the sabbatical. I spent an entire day and a half with him in Washington in early May at a workshop at the Jung Society. I’ve learned so much from him, but had also had a lot of questions. I sent him a letter of thanks from Iona, he replied within twenty-four hours, and said he would be available to talk. So last Friday he spared three wonderful hours, offering a rich, meaningful discussion.

In early May, Susan Hutton picked me up at 5:30 a.m. to catch a flight to Santa Fe, New Mexico. My destination was a Benedictine monastery, called Christ in the Desert, about two hours north of Santa Fe, situated at the end of a canyon, an hour off the main road, in a desert environment that was austere, bleak, yet beautiful. I was there for almost a week, spanning Pentecost, attending most of the seven, daily services in the abbey, that begin at 4 a.m. (made the 4 a.m. services twice), chanting the psalms (in English and Latin), and had a lot of time to think, to pray, to read, to sleep, but also to listen. One of the brothers in the abbey said they often get reservations from people in New York or Philadelphia who book three weeks there, hoping to “schedule” a “spiritual experience,” to detox, to cleanse their spirits. But by the third day, many of them leave, because the silence is too much. It takes about three days for the internal chatter of our minds to stop. By the third day, you either embrace the silence or you resist and say, it’s time to go. When the internal chatter stops and you have no distractions (such as the regular routine of life, or email, television, or schedules) and just stop, all you’re left with is yourself, or maybe you and God. And in that space, that vast open space of the heart, we see both what is good within and maybe what is not so good, we see the things we can affirm, but also our demons. We can run from this inner life, deny it, avoid it, fill it with all kinds of junk or we can confront our demons, like Jesus did, also in a desert. We can go into our heart of hearts, into the depths, and see what we discover there. And what we will discover in the depths, I believe – but it’s more than belief – I know, in the depths, is the abundance of God’s Being, if we trust, if we risk, if we dare.

“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch (Luke 5:4).” Jesus finishes up this encounter, by saying, “Follow me and you’ll be catching people.” Very often we see his text about discipleship and evangelism, a matter of “catching” people, and it is. But those words, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch,” are too poetic, too profound, to be overlooked. Jesus is dealing with metaphor here, of course. Whenever I read this verse I have only one association or metaphor. When Jesus tells us to put out into the deep, I can’t help but hear this as a summons to go down and in, to enter into the depths of my being, my soul, my heart, my psyche (whatever you want to call it). The sea is a metaphor for the heart, the unconscious, what lies below the surface of awareness. It’s an invitation to go inward, an inward turn that leads to such an overabundant yield that it cannot be contained. By inward, I don’t mean being self-focused, or selfish, or ego-centric navel-gazing. For some, being introspective or inward is considered a luxury they can’t afford, given all that is claiming their time. But, I would argue that ignoring the depths, avoiding the inner life, will eventually demand a heavier price.

What do I mean? By going inward we have a clearer sense of who we are – but also discover that in the depths we will experience the abundance of God. The psalmist knew this. “Out of the depths, I cried unto thee, O LORD (Psalm 130:1).” It’s from within, from the depths of our being as humans that we experience our faith in God, our relationship with Yahweh. It’s in the depths that we also experience the pain and anguish of doubt and fear, and yet still reach out to God. It all comes from within.

It was John Calvin (1509-1564), right at the beginning of his Institutes who said, writing from his experience, that knowledge of oneself leads to knowledge of God and a knowledge of God leads to a knowledge of oneself. And sometimes it’s difficult to discern which comes first and which is which. But the experience is known inwardly, in our hearts, in the depths. The more he knew about himself, the more he discovered about God, in the depths.[3]

The use of the word “depth” here in verse four, bathos, implies immensity, expansiveness, a spatial depth either of water or earth. It’s a metaphor rich in meaning, something profound, fundamental, which undergirds this world, which sustains our lives, our reality. In Gnosticism, God is referred to as bathos, the depth, the source of all our being. God, not so much “up there,” high and lofty, but deep and unfathomable. And in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul explains that before the Holy Spirit speaks to the human spirit, it has first searched the very depths of God (v. 10). And so the Spirit teaches from the depths of God to the depths of the human spirit. So that when the Spirit speaks to us it has gone through the depths of God, and conveys the depths of God to us – from depth to depth. Amazing.

All this goes on in the deep, not on the surface, not amid shallow superficialities, but in the deep. There’s something inherently significant here in the Jewish and Christian experience, that we encounter God in the depths, when we risk going out into deep water and let down our nets. We could almost say that Jesus is calling us to grow down, to grow down before we can reach out to others. We could say we’re being warned to be leery of religious teachings and practices that are shallow, superficial, and actually prevent us from going deep, because the surface always disappoints.[4]

De Profundis. Latin for, out of the depths. Depth. From the beginning of the sabbatical right to end, this was the current running through my experience. The importance of depth – of facing my fears and my demons and going in, of the power of God known in the depths of my being, of connecting with the source of my life. It was both discovery, but also rediscovery.

Let me explain: On the 25th February 1984, I read a sermon by Paul Tillich that resonated with me and shook me; it was called “The Depth of Existence.” I was in college. Now, I know, you’re thinking – what an odd child – not a lot of college students are reading Tillichian existential sermons in their sophomore year. What can I say? I was a nerd. What mattered most was that I was listening to my soul and knew that I wanted to live in the depths and not on the surface. I wanted to go down, deep and discover the One in whom I live and move and have my Being (Acts 17:28). Yes, going deep is painful and uncomfortable, because we’re forced to confront things in the dark waters of the mind and the past. But I knew that underneath every pain and every grief, there is joy, a joy that can only be found by going deep. It was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), once said, “The world is deep, and deeper than the day could read. Deep is its woe. Joy deeper still than grief can be. Woe says: Hence, go! But joy wants eternity, wants deep, profound eternity.” Curiously, while reading that sermon, I was also listening to Mahler’s Third Symphony (I know, I’m a nerd), listening to the fourth movement of the symphony, which contains a soprano solo singing this same exact text from Nietzsche. Carl Jung (1875-1961) would call this synchronicity – something of significance that I need to pay attention to, for it gives direction to what matters in my life.

In college, I reaffirmed my faith in Christ because Jesus spoke to the deepest needs of my soul and felt called to live in the depths and to help God’s people risk living in the depths, to live lives of profound meaning and joy, touched by eternity, by God, and I believed the church was the best place to do this. It’s also what Nietzsche was looking to the church to do in the nineteenth century, only in the end to be disappointed by the institution. Nietzsche is perhaps best known for being the atheist who declared “God is dead.” But we need to remember that he was going to be a minister. In the end he turned away because he could not find there a way to access the depths. I don’t think he literally meant God was dead. The church and its god were dead to the presence of God. In his spirit he kept searching the depths, but didn’t look to the church to help.

Everywhere I went on the sabbatical, I was reminded of the call to the depths. Whether it was in the deserts of New Mexico or the Blue Ridge Mountains, going back to Mendham to preach at the funeral for a dear friend who died in early June, or going to Scotland and being surrounded by water, everywhere the deep fathoms of the North Sea or the Atlantic Ocean confronted me, even sailing on the Mediterranean Sea off of Italy reminded me of the depths. I was reminded of this in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, looking for one painting (which I’ll talk about another time) only to discover a different one, by one of my favorite artists George Rouault (1871-1958). The painting spoke to me before I knew who painted it or what it was named. Guess what he called it? “Out of the Depths.”

But, you see, I’m like Simon Peter in this text; and my guess is many of you are too. We are reluctant to do what the Lord tells us. We are reluctant to go where the Lord sends us. And we come up with all kinds of excuses why we can’t or won’t go into the depths. You can almost hear Peter mumbling under his breath, “I can’t believe we’re heading back out there. What does this guy know about fishing, anyway, he’s just a preacher.” “Sure, Jesus, whatever you say, I’ll humor you, if you say so, I’ll let down the nets. What a know-it-all.”

“They caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.” And they signaled for another boat to collect the catch, and then both started to sink.”

And what did Peter do? He fell down at Jesus’ feet.

And what did he say? “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” “For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch they had taken.”

See what can happen when we listen to the Lord, when we put out into the deep and let down our nets for a catch? If we’re honest, we’re all like Simon Peter, who when confronted by the power, abundance, and holiness of God, standing in awe and amazement, recoils and says, “Too much, I can’t handle, I can’t stand it or withstand it,” and he doesn’t (literally), he falls to his knees. It’s too much. It’s all too much. With God it’s always too much, who is The Too Much!

Then he says to the Holy One, “Go away.” Go away. I am a sinner. I am not worthy for such a revelation. I don’t deserve to witness such an event. I’m not good enough to experience this kind of abundance, this kind of generosity, this kind of grace. Do you ever think that? I do. But I think it’s often an excuse, it’s a defense mechanism against living from the amazing claim that God is within us, and available to us. You see, when we go into the depths, eventually we will find God, but I think the knowledge and possibility of the “too much” scares us, which is why we are reluctant to go there, and why it’s easier to live on the surface with a superficial faith or why the church gets sidetracked in stupid debates and arguments, or why we simply tell God, “Go away.” I know it scares me. Maybe because the more we acknowledge what’s within, the greater our responsibility becomes. “Be present in my life, God,” we might pray; but not too much. Show up, God, but don’t show me something that’s going to cause my boat to sink, or what I can’t handle, or that’s going to mess up my world, or my value-system, or my career plan, nothing that would elicit that kind of change. And so we keep the Holy at bay, “domesticating transcendence,” keeping it tame, and we pay the price for it – in our hearts and in the church, and the world suffers because of it.[5]

But what if there’s all this abundance in the depths of your soul? What if there really is “a great sea surging within us”?[6] In ancient times, the Romans rarely sailed in open seas across the Mediterranean. They hugged the shore and went from port to port in order to get to their destination. But Jesus calls us to put out into the deep, face our fears, but don’t let them determine the journey, let down our nets, dare for the sake of discovering what’s truly available to us in God.

I think James Hollis is right when he says there’s one thing that blocks us from going deep and it is fear. And this fear often takes three forms: fear of loneliness, fear of rejection, and, most of all, he says from his years as a psychoanalyst, is the “fear of largeness.”[7] Largeness. That’s what I think scares Peter so much.

What if there’s all this abundance in your soul, largeness, potential, possibility, love, mercy, generosity, joy? What if it’s all there, given by the Source Himself, waiting to be caught and shared? Setting fear aside, what is the Lord asking you do with it? What would we do? We can begin to understand how disciples could leave everything behind and follow, because of the greater abundance their lives would yield when they listen to him and go deep. The same is true for us. It’s all worth the risk.


__________________________
Photo: Aillwee Caves, County Clare, Ireland. Beyond the Pale at http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy-c/249762701/

[1] Ruach, Hebrew for Spirit, “creates space. It sets in motion. It leads out of narrow places into wide vistas, thus conferring life. To experience the ruach is to experience what is divine not only as a person, and not merely as a force, but also as space – as the space of freedom in which the living being can unfold. That is the experience of the Spirit: ‘Thou has set my feet in a broad place.’ (Psalm 31:8). ‘You also he allured out of distress into a broad place where there is no cramping.’ (Job 36:16). According to Kabbalistic Jewish tradition, one of God’s secret names is MAKOM, the wide space. If God’s Spirit is experienced as this broad, open space for living conferred on created beings, then it is easy to understand the spatial designations which declare that people live ‘in’ God’s spirit, and experience God spatially as ‘breadth.’” Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Fortress Press, 1993), 42-43.

[2] Rodger Kamenetz, The History of Last Night’s Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul (HarperOne, 2008).
[3]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559). “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, whole joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he ‘lives and moves’ [Acts 17:28].” I. I.1.
[4] Cf. quotation from worship bulletin, theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965), “Why have [people] always asked for truth? Is it because they have been disappointed with the surfaces, and have known that the truth which does not disappoint dwells below the surfaces in the depth?” From his sermon, “The Depth of Existence” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 53.
[5] The phrase “domestication of transcendence” comes from the title of a book by theologian William Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).
[6] Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin, James Hollis, The Archetypal Imagination (College State: Texas A & M University Press, 2000), “As children we listened to the sound of the sea still echoing in the shell we picked up by the shore. That ancestral roar still links us to the great sea which surges within us as well.” (119).
[7] Hollis, 104.

Took, Blessed, Broke, Gave

Took, Blessed, Broke, Gave

Luke 24: 13-35

Third Sunday of Easter/ 6^th April 2008/ Sacrament of Holy Communion

There's something exceedingly profound about this Emmaus encounter, found only here in Luke. Since I was a teenager, this text has always fascinated me; it never fails to yield new layers of meaning and beauty. It's an Easter story and yet it's rarely heard on Easter. We prefer to hear what happened Easter morning. But what happened Easter evening is just as significant, and – dare I say – maybe more so.

On Easter evening two nameless disciples decide they've had enough of Jerusalem and escape to Emmaus. They couldn't get the recent events of the weekend out of their heads, they couldn't shake the shock from stories that Jesus was alive. In their journey of grief, Jesus arrives; he draws up alongside of them and walks with them. Never asserting himself but with the utmost respect for them he asks, "What are you talking about?" They tell him. We had hoped….
We had hoped…. He tries to explain to them the meaning of what they experienced. He starts with Moses and works his way up to the present, interpreting scripture. But this stranger wasn't making any sense.

They arrive in Emmaus, the journey complete for two of them. The third acts as if he has farther to go – he always has farther to go, this Jesus of ours, he's always eager to take us farther, always eager to go on – but they invite him to stay, urge him, for it is late and the day is almost over. So they went into their house, all three.

When it was time to eat, Jesus the guest takes the bread, as if he were the host, offers thanks to God for it, tears it, and then gives it to them. The one who came to serve, serves. And then it happened, in that moment they knew who he was. It's when he took bread and blessed it, broke it and then gave it to him – this entire sequence, this entire four-step experience – that they recognized him. It was as if they'd seen this before, but where? This was more than déjà vu. Where have we seen this before? Here, he graciously demonstrates what he tried to explain earlier in the day on the road, to make clear what they didn't understand, he acts the story of salvation; moving beyond the interpretation of a text, he picks up the bread and shows them.

Jesus vanishes and they run – at night (no one travelled at night), because this couldn't wait until morning – they flew back to Jerusalem and discovered there had been other Jesus sightings all over the place. He appeared to Simon. He was up in Emmaus, they say, and we recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Soon Jesus would stand there among them and say, "Peace be with you." And they jumped with fear as if they saw a ghost – I would have. But there's no reason to fear when God is involved. "Why are you frightened…?" He shows him his wounds and says, "Here, touch and see for yourself." Don't be afraid. And while they were "disbelieving for joy" – I love this, one of my favorite phrases in scripture – and totally perplexed, Jesus says – I love this, too – "Have you anything here to eat?" So real. So honest.

More and more I'm becoming convinced that in this story we are given the keys to the kingdom, deep insight into the inner-workings of the mind of God, a glimpse into some primordial pattern or secret of the ages. Here we find God's style. This is the answer to the riddle of life, the meaning of human existence. Here we can feel the rhythm of the universe; it's what makes the real world – God's world – tick. It's God's way of operating through Jesus and if Jesus is alive within us, it's the way God's people, the church, operate in the world. It's what it really means to be Christian: Took. Blessed. Broke. Gave. That's it. We are called to take or receive the gifts given to us by God (which is everything we have), acknowledge them as gifts not belonging to us. Then we bless them, that is we offer them up to God with thanks, with gratitude. And then we break them – we take a risk with them, we divide up what we have. Why? In order to give it away, in order to share it with others, so that they might take and receive these gifts and bless them, then break them and give them.

It's the pattern of the Lord's Supper and the pattern of the supper at Emmaus, every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper and every meal we share around any table, the pattern preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Took. Blessed. Broke. Gave. This is at the heart of the Christian life, the core of who we are and what we do. This pattern at the table must inform the pattern of our lives away from the table. This pattern is what it means to say, "I believe in Jesus Christ," or that "I love the Lord," or "I want to follow him."

Perhaps the crucial element of this pattern is the breaking, and perhaps the most difficult. We can be happy to receive any and every gift from God and we can be ever thankful for it, living grateful lives. But if it ends there, then that's not the way of Christ. There can be no giving, no true blessing, no sharing, we cannot become truly generous, our lives cannot reflect the crucified Lord without the breaking, without the fraction, without the rending, without the sacrifice, without yielding and finally letting go. It's in the breaking that they knew Jesus, because they saw in him the one who was broken and they witnessed in his breaking the willingness of God to be broken. Being broken paved the way for Jesus to give his life to you and me and the person beside you. We would not be able to receive him, receive the gift of his life within us if it were not for his willingness to be broken. It's the broken one who is Lord and Savior, servant and host of this meal.

In my journey as a Christian and as a minister, I believe all the more that Christ is known in the broken places, perhaps only there. Well, maybe not only there, but especially there. Where are these broken places? You know.

I also believe it's possible for Christians to miss Christ's presence because they resist going to the broken places – either in themselves or in others, or they live safe, predictable, conventional lives, avoiding anything that might be risky or scary. We can live this way and still be Christian, of course; God still loves us. But I wonder if when we do, we also miss out on the joy, the grace, the blessing, the celebration that comes when we risk and then give, when we risk and thereby create new opportunities for people to live and receive the gifts of God?

Presbyterian theologian William Placher reflects what this meal does to us, how it forms us. In an essay entitled "Eating Gracefully," he writes, "As Christians we are called to take risks, to make ourselves vulnerable in love, to share with strangers, to dare to challenge unjust power and take the consequences." We can't help but think of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) in this context, particularly this weekend 40 years after his death. "And we are promised joy and celebration, not as a reward bestowed extrinsically after having paid the price of enough suffering, but rather in that a life of vulnerable love is itself a life of joy."

That's the kind of church I imagine Christ yearns for. That's the church I dream of. It's the church I yearn for. It's possible. Not easy, but possible. Receiving. Blessing. Breaking. Giving. A church not afraid to take risks in his name. A church willing to be challenged and made uncomfortable, even uneasy in order to experience all the more Christ's joy and grace working through us. A church that risks a life of vulnerable love, that risks being broken and entering broken places. I've seen it here in this church and others, especially last Sunday evening in Philadelphia. I was there to attend the Covenant Network Board meeting on Monday at Broad Street Ministries. Our Middle School class had a mission trip there earlier this year which inspired our current clothing drive for local homeless). My friends Erika and Bill are the two directors of this new community that provides food and shelter for the homeless, Bible studies during the week, and worship on Sunday evenings, among other ministries. It was truly a profound and moving experience for me to be there in their worship space. The music was amazing. We sang old hymns, like "Leaning On the Everlasting Arms," as if they were written for today. There were about 160 people, about half were homeless, recovering addicts, mentally ill, people suffering from HIV/AIDS, broken people beaten up by life. The rest were people like you and me, with food on our tables and warm beds. People come from as far away as Princeton to worship there. They have Communion every week, by intinction. I've worshipped in diverse community before, but never worshipped in the midst of that kind of diversity, with the obviously broken and the broken who are successful and adept in hiding theirs. In Erika's invitation to the Table she reminded us, "There's more here than bread and wine." She encouraged us not to take a small piece of bread, but a hefty chunk, then to dip it in wine or juice. The first to the Table eager and with joy were the hungriest and homeless, who were not afraid to tear off a large piece of bread, dip it in the cup, and eat it, savoring it on the way back to their seats. They went to the Table hungry. Do we? I wondered how the bread tastes for them? Christ was there, surely recognized in the breaking of the bread.

So come with your hunger to this table, come with joy. Yes, awe at Christ's broken presence here, but also joy, joy, in receiving the gracious welcome of God. The Lord, Calvin (1509-1564) wrote, has "given us a Table at which to feast, not an altar upon which to offer a victim; he has not consecrated priests to offer sacrifice, but ministers to distribute the sacred banquet." A sacred banquet shared among all God's people, in community – receiving the gifts of God, and blessing God for them, breaking them, dividing them, risking them, yielding them, in order to share them, to give them. When we live this way in all that we do, people will recognize Jesus in us, we will recognize Jesus in each other, we will recognize Jesus working through us.
Rev. Dr. Kenneth E. Kovacs

Catonsville Presbyterian Church

Catonsville, Maryland

Quenching Our Thirst

John 4:1-30; 39-42

Third Sunday in Lent/24th February 2008

“He had to go to Samaria.” John tells us, “…he left Judea and started back to Galilee,” “But he had to go to Samaria.” What we need to know is that he didn’t have to go through Samaria, in fact his disciples probably wished he had not. A good Jew avoided Samaria and Samaritans – well, like the plague. A respectable, Law-abiding Jew wouldn’t be caught dead there – or alive. The whole place was disgusting, unclean for them. It all goes back to the time of the exile to Babylon. Israel, that is, the old northern tribes of Ephraim, called Samaritans, remained behind, they were not exiled. They stayed in the land, intermarried with their occupiers, and later allowed Alexander the Great (356-323) to build a temple on Mt. Gerizim. When Judah (the southern tribes) returned from Babylon, preserving Jewish identity was their first priority and would not accept any temple for the restored nation except the one built by Ezra in Jerusalem (in 450 BC). The Samaritans were followers of Yahweh (at least they thought they were). The center of their worship life was the ancient city of Shechem, not Jerusalem. Abraham built an altar for Yahweh in Shechem (Gen 12:6-8) on his way with Sarah into Canaan. Both Jacob and Joshua are associated with the place. The bones of Joseph were transported there from Egypt (Joshua 24:32). It’s a significant place – or was. In Jesus’ time a faithful Jew had nothing to do with a Samaritan. They avoided them. The most direct route from Judea to Galilee was through Samaria; however, in order to maintain ritual purity, people would rather take the long way around and avoid it altogether.

So when the text says Jesus had to go to Samaria, he really didn’t have to go – unless, of course, there was a reason. The main road forks at Shechem, also known, as in John’s Gospel, as Sychar, and in the middle of the road is Jacob’s Well where we find Jesus, sitting alone by the well, “tired out by his journey. It was about noon.” John’s attention to detail, such as the time of day, is remarkable and always serves a larger purpose. The hottest time of the day is not the time to get water from the well, particularly this well that was more than 100 feet deep, requiring considerable effort to access the water. You wouldn’t go to the well at this time, unless you couldn’t go when the rest of the women went to the well, which was in the cool of the evening. You wouldn’t go in the heat of the day unless you were ostracized or being excluded by your community. Yet, it’s precisely at this time that this Samaritan woman approaches the well to draw water and Jesus begins to speak to her.

There’s something else we need to know. Jesus wasn’t supposed to talk to this woman. Listen to the conventional ethical wisdom of his day: “A man shall not talk with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, on account of what others may say. He that talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself. If any man gives a woman a knowledge of God’s Law, it is as though he had taught her lechery.”[1] Jesus says, “Give me a drink.”

What we also need to know is that a Jew and Samaritan could not drink from a common cup or share utensils. A Jews’ cup had to pure, probably made of stone. Hence the startling response of the woman, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” And then Jesus began to share with her the word of God, a knowledge of God that will transform her life.

A well and the water it holds become metaphors for the life of Christ. The ordinary becomes the occasion of the extraordinary, an entrée into the new world that Christ offers to those who “drink” from him. If you knew who was asking you, “Give me a drink,” you would be wanting more than water, but living water. Of course she hasn’t a clue what Jesus is talking about. Why would she? It’s all rather mystical. It’s not unlike Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, as we saw last week, when he says to have the life of God you must be born again, or born from above, and Nic gets all confused (John 3). Actually, there’s an intentional contrast here between the two stories: Nic comes at night; the woman comes in broad daylight; Nic is the insider, as Pharisee, who realizes he’s on the outside of Jesus’ message because he doesn’t understand it; the woman is an outside, both as a Samaritan and even in her own community, she’s an outsider – burned through five marriages and now has a live-in lover, who is not her husband, and yet by the end of the story she becomes an insider, a follower. She’s more open to Jesus’ message than Nicodemus was, probably because she realized just how much was empty and missing in her life.

“Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” How can you be greater than our ancestor Jacob who provided for us by giving this well? “Drink from this water,” and you’ll be thirsty again, drink “of the water that I give you” and you’ll never be thirsty.” “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman doesn’t understand. She’s being concrete, literal – one might say, practical. “Give me this water so that I may never be thirsty and/or have to keep coming here to draw water.” In other words, “Give me this water so that I might never thirst and never again have to come to this blasted well. Because, you see, Mister, it’s exhausting, tiring, trying to quench this thirst day after day, carrying the water in these jugs. Going to the well, alone. This well represents and reminds me of all that is wrong with my life – all the shame, the isolation, the exhaustion. Day after day I have to fill this empty jug to quench a thirst that allows me to keep on living, for without water I will die, but what kind of life do I really have? I keep going to this well, even though my life has run dry.”

When Jesus says the water he offers “gushes” up into eternal life, it literally means “leaping up,” “welling up.” It’s a vivid image. It’s the word used by Isaiah to describe the lame “leaping up” for joy in Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord that causes life, real life, eternal life, the life of God. It’s how the psalmist spoke of God, “For with you is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9). Or it’s the kind of life Isaiah tells us God provides, “The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail” (Isaiah 58:11).

She probably realizes that Jesus is talking about more than water when he says, “Fetch your husband – so that he, too, (!) can share this living water.” She lies, probably from shame. She denies having a husband. Then she exposes her lies and pretensions and reveals the truth of her life – not to judge, but to reveal. There is considerable depth of divine concern for this one individual; you see, it’s why Jesus had to go to Samaria. “You’re right, you don’t have a husband.” You have to wonder just how loving the relationship could be. It couldn’t have been all that affirming because if it were she would have been married. After being married five times, she is also extremely poor.

Without mentioning this further, she shifts the conversation to talk theology; she wants to know why her people have been so unfairly mistreated, judged as unlovable. There will come a time, the time of the Messiah, when all these divisions will be removed, the excluded included, the worship of Yahweh not identified with a space or place, but a worship that reflects the nature of God, who is spirit, whose very spirit is present in the person of the man who sits and talks to a Samaritan woman and says, the one you’re really searching for, the one for whom you really thirst, the one you’re waiting for to fill your life to change everything is none other than the Messiah. And then she leaves the well and her empty jug behind and runs to tell the others. “Come and see.”

Did you notice that she left the jug behind? It’s the empty jar that’s perhaps most significant here because what she’s really thirsting for won’t be found in that well.[2]

Are you thirsty? I wish John told us her name; it’s known only to God. Maybe John wants us to put our own names in the narrative, if we could get beyond gender differences, of course. I think she stands for all of us who are thirsty for something more, but not really sure what it is. Or maybe, she represents people who think that their thirst can be satisfied one way, only to discover that they’re all the more empty inside, something is still missing.

Are you thirsty? It’s tough to know for us. We have such a odd association with water today. Sure we know it’s the foundation of human existence, but, until recently we just assumed it will always be here. We took it for granted. Just turn on the faucet. The water supply for Atlanta last fall was dangerously low. The earth is losing water, fast. The vice-president of the World Bank, Ismail Serageldin, warned that the next world war will be over water, not oil. Where it might seem we have enough, it can’t be used. In the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge (1772-1834) was perhaps prophetic when we wrote, “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water is readily accessible for direct human use. Every 15 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease. Unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene cause 88% of all diseases [3]

Have you ever really been thirsty? I haven’t. Do we even know what thirst feels like? We know we need our eight glasses of water per day. Some of us are obsessed with being hydrated. We walk around with our water bottles everywhere we go (like me, but at least I try to recycle all of my bottles). We don’t know what it’s like to be dependent upon water. For many, our living water might be a beer or cappuccino or our favorite carbonated beverage. Listen to the words of this ad: “Thirst is harder to satisfy – really satisfy – than most anything else in the world. You can slake it for the moment with most any wet thing, but just when you think it’s all right, it bobs up serenely again with a cry for more. Water, soft drinks, alcoholic drinks, sweet drinks, sour drinks – none of them quite does the work. There’s just one thing that we know of that actually will quench a tantalizing thirst and that is Coca-Cola: The Satisfactory Beverage.” This was a Coke ad in 1908.

What does it mean to really thirst? If we don’t understand thirst or being daily dependent upon water, I wonder if it’s really possible to enter fully into the world of this text. It seems to me that our inability to know what physical thirst feels like hinders us from recognizing the deeper soul-thirst we all have. That’s why mystics and monks often fast – intentionally give up food and drink for a period of time – in order for their bodies to reflect and connect with a deep, interior hunger that food will never provide and a thirst that all the water in the world will never slake. Sometimes our trips to the well are really only masking our real thirsts. In our society where we are cursed with so much and think we have everything we need, it’s difficult for us even to admit that we lack anything, that we need anything or need anyone, that we really need a community of faith – that we even need God.

Unless we come to terms with what we lack and acknowledge our need, unless we see just how parched we are, how can there really be any need for the “living water” Jesus offers? What more can he give us than we already have? Perhaps the critical question is this: what will it take to leave your jug at the well?

_____________________________
[1] Quoted in Calvin Theological Seminary’s Center for Excellence in Preaching: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewContent.php?iID=135&sID=1

[2] Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin: “If I had a water thirst,” replied Sancho, “there are wells on the road where I could have quenched it.” Miquel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Don Quixote.
[3] Statistics found at: www.water.org.

Letting God be God

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-17 & Matthew 4:1-11

First Sunday in Lent/10th February 2008

Jesse realized he needed to go on a diet. It was going to be difficult. Just to make sure he would succeed, he announced his plan to all his friends and co-workers ahead of time. Jesse was a kindred spirit with Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) who once said, “I can resist anything – except temptation!” Jesse’s co-workers were pretty good about giving Jesse moral support, until the morning he walked into an office carrying a box of freshly-baked donuts. “What’s with the donuts, Jesse?” one of them asked. “I though you were on a diet.” “I am,” Jesse said. “But I want you to know I wouldn’t have gotten these donuts if it weren’t for God.” That remark demanded an explanation and it came quickly, “You see, I was driving into work, and I knew I’d have to go right past the bakery. I just couldn’t get those donuts out of my mind – so I decided to pray to God for help. I said, ‘God, if you want me to have a box of hot, delicious donuts, give me a parking place right in front of the bakery. Sure enough, I found one – on my eighth trip around the block!”

We can rationalize anything, including the strongest of temptations, and even call on God to help us in the process. It’s true, isn’t it? We can be as crafty as any serpent in justifying our actions. Oh we are smooth and slick as we slither our way around what we ought to do and ought not to do. “I’m not living a greedy lifestyle of over-consumption; I’m just pursuing the American dream” – even more so now knowing those rebate checks will soon be in the mail. “I’m not hurting anybody when I cheat my customers; I’m just following the laws of the marketplace.”

We know what tempts us. Most of the time it’s not so much the bad or even overtly evil things that really tempt us or lead us astray, as it is the good things, or at least the things that appear to be good. Something as good as a piece of fruit or a donut can lead us off course. Beauty’s enticement, “a delight to the eyes,” (Gen. 3:6) can cause us to fall. Even the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge can have disastrous results. A character in Charles Baudelaire’s (1821-1867) short story “The Generous Gambler” (1864), recounts the only time he was ever truly afraid. It was when he heard a preacher shout from the pulpit, “Dearly beloved, never forget, when you hear anyone vaunt the progress of enlightenment, that the Devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” The greatest evils, the most dangerous temptations are not the overt ones, but the covert ones, the hidden and seemingly simple, subtle, innocent acts that cause us to stumble. Comedian George Carlin once said, “I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a part of hell will break loose. It’ll be much harder to detect.”

But Genesis 3 is about more than the dangers of giving into temptation, of what happens when we submit to temptation, whether it’s fruit or a donut. Sure, we can plumb the depths of this Genesis text and discover all the ways we might resonate with Adam or Eve or maybe even the serpent, and then hold this story up in order that we, and especially our children, learn from them, primarily from their mistakes. Here is what we ought not to do. That’s one’s common way to look at this text. Indeed, these early chapters in Genesis slowly evolved into little more than a morality play, that is, a story showing us how God expects us to behave and if we don’t follow the rules we’ll be judged accordingly – indeed, have been judged, thrown out of the garden and forced to live forever east of Eden. In many ways, this is how the church has interpreted this story across the centuries: that there are consequences for our actions. Of course there are. But there’s more than ethics going on in this text.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter: Did God really consign the entire human race to a perpetual state of sin purely because some prehistoric ancestor swiped a piece of fruit?[1] Think about it. Is this what we’re saying actually caused the fall of humanity, this one act with eternal consequences? Why didn’t God just forgive them, for surely God foresaw what the future was going to be? Why did that one act lead God to curse them and cast them off from paradise? It all seems kind of petty and even small on God’s part. Did so much hang on that one act? One slip-up followed by a slippery-slope of sin winding its way down through the centuries? Centuries upon centuries of blame, of blaming the ones who have come before us, centuries of saying “It’s not my fault.” “The devil made me do it.” It’s Adam’s fault or Eve’s fault. Centuries upon centuries of blaming women for everything that is wrong in the world and all the evil in the human heart. Theologians actually used this text as proof that women are morally and intellectually inferior to men. Women are “the weaker sex,” because if a man had been there at the moment by the tree, strong-Adam would not have yielded to temptation – yeah, right.

Sin is in the world because Eve picked a piece of fruit? Is this what we really believed is the cause of all the sin and evil in the world? Don’t say, Yes, too quickly. Because if you believe this then think about what you’re saying about God. You turn God into a petty, vindictive ruler, with an almost masochistic sense of justice. It’s a cruel picture of God. And yet, to a considerable degree, this is the image that we’ve inherited misreading this text. Robert Burns (1759-1796) parodies this belief in “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” the prayer of a Presbyterian minister who declares all “deserve [such] just damnation/ For broken laws./ Five thousand years ‘fore [our] creation,/ Through Adam’s curse.”[2]

We’ve misread this portion of Genesis, along with the Creation accounts because we assume this is a story of origins: the origin of the universe, the origin of humanity, and the origin of sin and evil. We often turn to Genesis to explain how we got here and got ourselves into this mess. And it’s precisely this kind of reading that has messed us up even more. I think we should shift the emphasis. Genesis is not answering the question how, so much as it’s answering the question what; less a question of why, so much as an answer to the question what. It’s making a statement – about what the creation is, about what it means to be human, and human in relation to God, which allows us to see the “what” of sin and evil.

The key to the text is the prohibition against eating fruit from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” But what’s wrong with knowing the difference between good and evil, you’re probably asking. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to know? Why would God get mad at swiping some fruit? The serpent knows the answer. The serpent doesn’t tell a lie. What he says isn’t false, it’s true. But the serpent fails to tell the whole truth. He withholds a portion of it. It’s like any article in The Presbyterian Layman, they never quite tell the whole truth; about 80% of it is correct, but it’s the missing 20% that makes all the difference, that’s so destructive in its consequences.

The Hebrew word for “knowledge,” yada, means more than cognitive knowledge. It also means an awareness of judgment, of justice. To eat from this tree means to know enough to judge and judgment belongs to God alone. To eat of this fruit one becomes like God and in reaching for the status and authority of God is to reach beyond what is allotted to us. The fruit is a symbol, a metaphor, a mythic way to get at the truth, to say something profound about the human condition. The point is this: we are fallen, flawed creatures, inflicting untold damage and destruction upon this world, ourselves, and others. Not because of one foolish act a long time ago that we’re paying the price for. But because this foolish act is repeated, as it were, almost daily. We could say Adam is Everyman (“adam” is actually plural, it’s not a proper name, and means “of the earth or dust”) and Eve (which means “life”) is Everywoman. We could also say that Adam and Eve are both in every man and woman, earth/dust/soil come alive by the ruach or spirit of God.

The Genesis story says something profound about what it means to be human in order to help us see the mess that we’re in. Their humanity is ours. Their DNA is our DNA. Their fatal flaw is our fatal flaw, and it’s this: it’s our unwillingness to be human, to be creature, to live with limits and our unwillingness to allow God to be God. It is the desire to become more than we are. That’s the source of sin.

The human condition is sinful. It doesn’t mean that we’re thoroughly bad, because we’re not; neither is this statement meant to make us depressed and full of guilt. This is a gracious text to help us acknowledge the source of our sorrow, then confess that there is something about being human that won’t remain satisfied with being human. Sin is a force within and without us that tempts us to overreach, and every time we overreach by trying to be little gods, we fall. We can even be tempted by the good – but aren’t we supposed to be good as God is good, be like God? we might ask – yet it’s that reach, seemingly so innocent, that can become so harmful. Terrible things happen when we try to play God or think we’re God.

We sin when we forget that our thoughts are not God’s thoughts and our ways are not God’s ways. When we try to act like God, we will fall every time. When we prefer to judge others instead of letting God judge, we fall. When we make decisions that adversely affect the lives of others, we make judgments about life and death, which we don’t have the authority to make, and so we fall. Sin is not letting God be God, refusing as creature to live within our limits, refusing to be dependent upon the Creator, assuming control over everything. Refusing to trust God, we take matters into our own hands with monstrous results. We’re not paying the price today because Adam and Eve “fell” a long time ago. Adam and Eve are in here, in our hearts, and when we act like them, humanity falls and falls and falls again.

How we view what took place in Eden inevitably shapes how we understand what Jesus experienced, for us, in Jerusalem, and affects the way we understand ourselves as we continue to live east of Eden. Lent is a good time to explore these questions – which we have only begun to explore this morning.

To receive ashes at the start of Lent is to acknowledge our mortality, which is another way of confessing our limits, which is another way of remembering what it means to be a creature, to be human, to live, even with our flaws, without trying to become like God.[3] So much pain and suffering and evil in the world are due precisely to this overreach.

Here we can learn from Jesus. On the cross, Jesus took on this destructive force within us in order to wrestle us free from it and to defeat its power. That struggle began in the wilderness. That’s what Satan was trying to do to Jesus in the wilderness. Satan was telling the truth to Jesus, but not the whole truth. To give into those temptations would have meant that Jesus reached beyond his own humanity. He, too, knew his limits. In this sense Jesus was without sin and in doing so, here and throughout his life, graciously demonstrated for us what authentic humanity looks like, which includes, among so many other wonderful things, letting God be God. His grace within us allows us to do the same.

[1] I am grateful to the Rev. Dr. Carlos Wilton, minister of the Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church, Point Pleasant, NJ, for succinctly and beautifully capturing the critical question posed by this text and for sharing his exegesis of this lection at the Homiletical Feast lectionary study group in Bradenton, FL.
[2] Presbyterian theologian, B. A. Gerrish, makes the point that original sin “does not mean that we suffer for Adam’s sin, but that others must suffer for our sins.” From his sermon “Sin” in The Pilgrim Road: Sermons on the Christian Life, Mary T. Stimming, ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 89.
[3] Cf. the quotations from the worship bulletin: “This is the time of tension between dying and birth.” T. S. Eliot (1889-1965), “Ash Wednesday.” And, from the Heidelberg Catechism of 1562, the first question: “What is your only comfort, in life and in death? That I belong – body and soul, in life and in death – not to myself, but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ….” Book of Confessions, PCUSA.

When Everything Comes into Focus

Matthew 17:1-8
Transfiguration of the Lord/3rd February 2008

There are moments when everything comes into focus, when everything becomes perfectly clear, moments of searing insight and brilliance which change everything. I once was blind, but now I see, I see – and nothing, no one will ever look the same again. We thought we knew who Jesus was, we thought we had him figured out, but here on this holy mountain, we come to see who he really is. The sight of his transfiguration transfigures our eyes and thoughts, our ears and our hearts. For the core of his being shone through the radiance of his face and he became dazzling, like a flame, with the intensity of pure, white, blinding light. In the midst of the cloud overshadowing Jesus, we hear a voice, “This is my Son, my Beloved; with him I am well pleased: listen to him!” A voice that threw the disciples to the ground, overcome by fear. Then Jesus goes over and touches, touches them – in their fear – and said, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

Three imperatives. One from God – “Listen to him” meaning the Son. And from the Son, these two encouraging, compassionate commands, “Get up,” followed by “do not be afraid.” Of all the times I’ve read or preached on this text, I’ve always focused upon God’s command, “Listen to him.” But this week, something else hit me. After reading a particular text during Bible study, I tend to ask this question: “So, what struck you in this text?” How did the Word strike your heart, move your spirit, speak to you? It’s always fascinating to see how the Spirit moves through us through a text. This week, what struck me were these words: “Get up.” “Do not be afraid.”

But why were they afraid? Wouldn’t you be? I would. The natural response to the glory of God’s presence is fear. We can call it holy awe, if it makes us feel better, yet there is still a sense of fear – more like ego-shock, perhaps, an awareness of someone completely Other, an overwhelming Other before whose presence we know we have no right to stand on our own, and so we fall down on our knees and cover our faces before the Holy of Holies.

When God moves in our lives it can be a fearful thing (which is why we resist God, but not for long). It’s fearful because facing God inevitably costs us something, namely our control over reality and our lives. Get mixed up with this God and you discover there’s more going on in the world than what meets the eye (and why our sight always need transfiguring). It’s fearful because this God might actually ask me to do something that’s simply too big for me to do, to become someone I know I’m not on my own, to go somewhere I would rather not go, that doesn’t appear safe, to embark on a journey that I would probably prefer not to take. To encounter God means fundamentally that our lives will change, they will be different. They have to change. If they don’t then it’s probably safe to say we haven’t encountered God. Kierkegaard (1813-1855) said, “Once you wise up, you can’t dummy down.” For after encountering the presence of God in the face of Jesus Christ how can you go back to normalcy? What is normal after that?

Being normal (which Presbyterians like to do), safe, or secure have nothing to do with being a disciple – and this text on the Sunday before the beginning of Lent is all about what it means to be a disciple, a student in the school of Jesus, a follower of Jesus Christ. Fear is never the ultimate reality for the disciple; we are called to live beyond fear – and that’s tricky. Being a disciple isn’t easy, it’s very difficult. To follow inevitably involves a cost. Therefore, it requires courage – courage to see, to look at, to acknowledge the radiance of God in the face of Jesus Christ – and not deny it – and then live with all of its life-changing ramifications.[1]

How do we get the courage to step out and live as if God is really God, that Christ is Lord of our lives, and to listen to him, that this world and our lives within it belong not to ourselves, but to him – in order that our lives might be used by him for the glory of God, which is really what our souls long for more than anything else. Courage. In a speech given in 1922 at St. Andrews University, J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), of Peter Pan fame, said to a generation of youth disillusioned after the Great War, “Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.”[2] Do we have the courage to listen, to really be disciples, to go where he leads?

No. We don’t. Courage to be a disciple? No, we don’t. On our own, we don’t. If we have to trust our own inner resources to try to dredge up courage, then this is just a kind of works righteousness, trying to earn our salvation, acting as if God had nothing to do with it all, relying only on ourselves – that’s a horrifying way to live a life.

But Jesus went over to his disciples in their fear and trepidation and touched them and said, “Get up.” “Get up.” “Get up and do not be afraid.” Fear not.
Get up and follow, free from binding fear because the Lord of love has touched you and assures you that you can. Get up and follow, beyond the bounds of fear because his grace summons us to do so. And the one who commands also equips us with the courage to follow. Get up and do not be afraid because it’s the Lord who tells us so – and he can be trusted.

It’s the same Lord who invites us to come to his table. Set your fear aside. Share the bread of grace and drink the cup of courage, which allow us to listen to him and to follow wherever he leads.


[1] Cf. quotation from the worship bulletin: “…the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?” Reverend John Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s, Gilead: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2004), 245.
[2] J. M. Barrie, Courage. The Rectorial Address delivered at St. Andrew’s University, May 3, 1922. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 40.