Sermons

October 19, 2025

Written on Your Heart

My father used to whip us with a razor strap.  He would double the strap over so that when it smacked our rear ends, the sides would slap together, and the sound of that strap snapping was far more terrifying than the actual pain from the smack on our bottoms.  To this very day, when I fear (or know) that I have done something wrong, I can feel my buttocks tighten up in dread anticipation.  I think my dad did that because his father had done it to him.  I vowed that I wouldn’t do that to my children.  So I just smacked their butts with my bare hand.  I wish for all I’m worth that I had never done that.  One more example of the way in which the Bible is a great book.  It tells us that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.¹

I suppose that’s partly why my response to this morning’s reading from Jeremiah was so personal.  Jeremiah says that days are coming when “they shall no longer say: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’  But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.”  In other words, the time will come when the parents’ sins will reside only with themselves and not be visited upon their children and grandchildren.  It will be a time of individual accountability.  And then Jeremiah goes on to describe this age to come as the day of “a new covenant.”  And this is the covenant that God will make with God’s people: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”  So, this age to come will be a time of personal responsibility, when the lessons of the ancestors will no longer be crucial, and there will be no need for teachers, or for scriptures or laws, because all people will have the very law of God imprinted on their hearts.

In our second scripture reading today, we have what seems to be the polar opposite.  The Apostle Paul, writing to his young protégé, Timothy, also says that “Days are coming . . .”  The coming days that Paul speaks of are similar to Jeremiah’s, but Paul is not so enamored of them as is the ancient prophet.  He says that when people follow their own hearts instead of turning to the sacred writings and the sound doctrine and teaching that begins in childhood they will end up turning “away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”

So, these days that are coming, which will they be: no need for scripture or teaching because every person, taking individual responsibility, will have the law of God written on the heart, or a rejection of scripture and sound teaching while each person follows personal desires and “wanders away” from the truth?  I think it’s both.  In fact, I think those days that are coming are already here, on both scores.

Let’s start with Jeremiah’s utopian future.  It’s really a lovely image, but I have a hard time thinking it’s to be taken literally.  And here’s why: If Jeremiah were serious about this time when there would be no need to teach one another, he would have to be envisioning a time when people stopped having babies.  Because a child needs to learn; a child needs to be taught, and guided by parents and others; a child needs to read an encounter and struggle and grow.  In human culture there is no such thing as stasis – as a time when all tradition and learning grinds to a halt.  So I take Jeremiah’s prophecy here (I’m sure you won’t be surprised) as a metaphor.  I think we are being given a picture of something divine, something to be treasured.  I think that treasure is the very way in which Divine law is, in fact, written on our hearts, and has been since this world got “Let there be’d” or “Big Banged” into existence.

The author of the book of Genesis offers another metaphor that makes the point eloquently.  He writes, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  So, the central affirmation at the very beginning of the Bible is that you and I at the most basic core of our being are the very image of God.  Our hearts are indeed etched with the very outlines of divinity.  The great Protestant reformer, John Calvin, agrees.  He wrote, “since there has never been a country or family, from the beginning of the world, totally destitute of religion, it is a tacit confession that some sense of the Divinity is inscribed on every heart.”²

And early Christians certainly regarded this New Covenant of Jeremiah’s as already having come into fruition in Christ.  What we call the “New Testament” is simply another word for “New Covenant.”  And the words of Jesus at the last supper seal the deal.  He said, “This cup is a new covenant in my blood.”  Jeremiah’s vision is not a future possibility it is a present reality.  We are inheritors of a covenant of love “written on our hearts.”  You know that from your own experience.  We all have that “little voice” inside that we have learned to trust.  It’s an intuitive sense that I have found if I disregard I will live to regret it.  Freud may say it’s our “superego.”  I think it’s part of how Divine law is written on our hearts.

So why do we often seem to be such little devils?  That’s where Paul’s letter to Timothy comes in.  It’s the flip-side of the same coin as Jeremiah’s vision.  It’s the truth of the garden of Eden; that, even though we have that image of God in our hearts, we nonetheless seem to crave the forbidden fruit.  We “accumulate for [ourselves],” as Paul put it, “teachers to suit [our] own desires.”  In other words, we start with our prejudices and hurts and needs, and find proof texts, statistics, and people around us who will reinforce them.  And so, we need correction.  We need the lessons of history, the counterbalancing influence of others, and the guidance of scripture.

That’s where this whole thing gets tricky.  Paul writes to Timothy, “. . . continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”  And then he talks about those who follow teachers who will “suit their own desires.”  We are immediately reminded of those among our Christian brothers and sisters who seem to find in scripture little more than a way of condemning and shunning the unworthy.  And we find ourselves wondering how they can be so convinced that they are not finding teachers to suit their own desires.  And we wonder the same thing about ourselves.  What is that which Paul calls, “sound doctrine,” and what is that which he calls “wandering away into myths?”  Which is which and how do you know?

I once posed just that question to a group Bible study and got a wonderful response that has stuck with me.  I asked, “How do you know if what you have internalized and trust in your own heart is in accord with Divine intentions for yourself, or for the world?”  And the answer came in the form of another question: “Why do you have to know?”  The light dawned.  I realized at once that the impulse to know that you are right, that your interpretations are in accord with the Lord’s will is the very root of our problem.  It is, in fact, terribly important to not know!  The only way to keep from falling into the same kind of misguided self-assurance that leads to suicide bombing jihadists and hate-driven Christians and others is to be resolutely and vigilantly uncertain.  That means constantly checking your perspectives against the themes and emphases of scripture, repeatedly bouncing your thoughts off of other trusted people (even people who disagree with you), continually asking yourself if what you do and what you profess jibes with that deep inner voice that somehow knows the difference between right and wrong.  And it means never yielding to the temptation to be finally satisfied with your answers to those questions.

But don’t begin to think that this means all religious thought is relative and it doesn’t matter what you believe or what you do.  That’s the farthest thing from either Jeremiah or Paul.  The great novelist Flannery O’Conner expressed her frustration with what she saw happening in modern Protestantism.  She wrote, “One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention.”³  O’Conner makes  good point.  The point is not to find some wishy-washy place where there are only questions and therefore never an answer.  The point is to be clear and earnest in listening to the law that is written on your heart, pursuing sound teaching, and following your beliefs with committed action – but to never stop questioning yourself, correcting yourself, searching for more light, more truth.  It is by that means that we grow and become more than we are, a process that never ends.  T.S. Elliot, in his poem, Little Gidding, captured poignantly the power of this transformation expressed in remorse.  He wrote:

. . . the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of motives late revealed, and the awareness

Of things ill done and done to others’ harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Those lines strike home with me.  When I think back to the father’s sins I visited upon my own children, I find some gratification in knowing that, for me and for them, there is such as thing as becoming.

The long and short of it is that both Jeremiah’s New Covenant of a law written on our hearts and Paul’s admonition about not following our own hearts (and “itching ears”) into a place of error, are the two wings that can keep us flying on course.  And in the end, how can you tell if you are anywhere close to staying on course?  Well, it’s simple.  It’s written on your heart.

¹ See Exodus 34:7.

² John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 1.

³ Quoted in The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by Paul Elie, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

October 12, 2025

All Broken, All Made Whole, All Rejoicing

Today is Access Sunday, and the beginning of Disability Awareness Week.  It’s a date on the calendar that doesn’t exactly jump out at you like Halloween or Thanksgiving.  I have to confess, my eyes initially just skipped along without it even registering.  But, the more I turned it over in my head, the more I realized this day isn’t about someone else; it’s about me.  And that cast our lectionary readings for this morning in a whole different hue.

The first thing I encountered was this passage from Luke, where Jesus heals the ten lepers, but only one returns to offer praise for the miracle.  It occurred to me that the nine who didn’t return probably wrote it all off as just another happenstance, and maybe that’s what we do all the time.  Maybe we don’t notice the miracles that can happen every day.

One happened to my brother, Bill.  As many of you know, Bill, a retired Navy commander, died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) some years ago.  In the course of his illness he became unable to walk, speak, eat, or talk.  But then he was presented with a miracle; it’s a contraption that attached to his head with a laser beam on it that he could manipulate with tiny head movements to point at characters on a special pad, which then take the information and through a computer translate it into audible speech.  You may not consider that a miracle, but I do.

There was the story of Joey McIntyre’s son, Rhys, who was born with a profound hearing loss.  Joey is a member of the band “New Kids on the Block” (a group which has been around long enough that they are neither “new” nor “kids;”  Joey is fifty two).  At any rate, Rhys had a bright future ahead of him, with parents that loved him and, more than that, electronically enhanced hearing devices, such as advanced technology hearing aids and Cochlear implants, surgically implanted electronic devices that can help profoundly deaf people hear sounds.  Those may not seem like miracles to you, but they do to me.

And there are support groups for disabled people of all sorts, advocacy organizations working to change access policies and public opinions, research facilities engaged in finding new cures, new aids, new resources, groups like the Special Olympics that offer opportunities for social engagement, achievement and recognition, and educational institutions working with hearing and vision impaired people, and physically and intellectually disabled people.  Miracles all.

But there’s still plenty to be done.  There are minds and hearts to change all over this world – to stop stigmatizing those with disabilities and treating them like, well, like lepers.  There are still battles to be fought for access equality.  One of those was the “Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act” passed in 2010, one of the few significant pieces of legislation the United States Congress has managed to pass on a totally bipartisan basis.  This bill required greater accessibility for things like remote controls, telecommunications equipment, smartphones, television program guides, and closed captioning, and it provided funds for low income deaf and blind people to buy Internet access equipment.  Little victories keep being won.  There is an update to this legislation currently pending in Congress called “The Communications, Video, Technology Accessibility Act.” There could be more to come.

Then, I read again this remarkable old story from the book of 2 Kings about the army commander Naaman who suffered from leprosy.  He turned to the great prophet Elisha for a cure.  And Elisha’s answer?  “Go wash seven times in the river Jordan.”  Naaman was incensed; he didn’t want to be directed to some everyday, routine thing like taking a bath in the river.  He wanted something exceptional – an extraordinary, headline-grabbing kind of cure.  But Elisha knew best.  Indeed, a dip in the river was all it took to make Naaman whole again.

It occurs to me that wholeness is always available in the routine, mundane things of life.  We may not have a special serum developed tomorrow that will allow a person with a spinal chord injury to jump up out of the wheelchair, but we do have sunsets, and loving hands of comfort, and majestic music, and inner resources of spirit and strength.  Wholeness is more than legs that work, or eyes that see, or ears that hear.  Wholeness is a state of being that is accessible in all circumstances of life to every broken one of us.

Which leads me to my final revelation, from the book of Jeremiah.  Here, the great prophet has a word from the Lord to the people of Israel carried off into exile in Babylon by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar.  He offers these staggering words: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

In part, I think the message is: you’ve been exiled to this city; that’s where you are.  Do not lament your fate, but live where you are, seek the welfare of that city.  That message ties in with something I’ve been working on in my own life.  It has to do with an old song.  You might remember it:

“When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, ‘What will I be?  Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me: ‘Don’t bother me right now, I’m busy!'”

No, in all seriousness, I’ve been expanding on the message: “Que sera, sera” (what will be, will be).  I’ve added: Que fue, fue and Que es, es.  What was, was; what is, is.  Mourning a lost past is just as much a waste of time and emotional energy as dreaming of a hopeful future.  Cherish the moment in which you live.

But there’s another message in this word from the Lord: In the welfare of your enemy you will find your welfare!  Can you get your mind around that?  The word of the Lord to Jeremiah is that your people and their Babylonian captors are intimately bound to one another.  Their success is your success; they’re failure is your failure.  You cannot separate yourself from them by claiming that their actions and ways make them unlovable, undeserving, disconnected.

Here’s the plain and simple truth: all of us on this planet are part of one another.  All people of all backgrounds, and all abilities and disabilities are completely intertwined.  In the welfare of others we will find our welfare.  Here’s the plain and simple truth: every single one of us is disabled in some way.  It’s all simply a matter of type or degree.  Some of us need glasses, some of us don’t hear quite as acutely as others, some of our brains don’t work as quickly as others, some of us have arthritis, or bad knees, or old football injuries, or any of a thousand other things.  Here’s the plain and simple truth: the “disabled” are not “them”  they are us.  The fact of being human means living within the bounds of these human bodies and minds, each of which is limited; all are simply limited in different ways and to different degrees.

I saw a plaque on the wall next to a chairlift that said, “So that all may come.”  That “all” doesn’t just mean someone else, it means you and me.  “In their welfare you will find your welfare.”  There are still barriers to be brought down.  There is still work to do.  Another bill that was signed into law along with the original access bill changed the wording of all health, education and labor laws.  It replaced the words “mentally retarded” with “intellectual disability.”  That may seem like a trivial matter; it’s just words.  But it’s reflective of a larger issue.  How we speak about people reflects how we think of them.  And how we think of them impacts how we treat them.  I think I for one could stand to think through not only the language used, but the attitudes and actions that I project.

So, when the ten lepers were healed, only one returned rejoicing.  Jesus said, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”  I think that’s a message directed at us.  Each one of us is broken in some way.  Each one of us has access to wholeness because of the Holy Spirit that pervades our lives and dwells in our hearts.  Each one of us can love and be loved, which is the surest and most direct route to wholeness.  Each one of us has the capacity to work for equality and greater access for all.  And each one of us is given the opportunity to live like the tenth leper, with joyful, thankful hearts, giving praise to the Lord for wholeness and hope.

So here’s my word of advice for today: when you see someone with a twisted or distorted face, an unusual gate, a withered hand, seated in a wheelchair, or walking a seeing eye dog, showing evidence of mental impairment, or having a computer speak for them, don’t pity, don’t cringe, don’t withdraw, don’t stare.  Simply see yourself in them, as you may with any other person you meet.  See your own brokenness, and see the opportunities for wholeness that you share with them.  Indeed, we are all broken, we can all be made whole, and we might all be found rejoicing.

September 28, 2025

Remembering

In today’s scripture reading, Jesus relates a bizarre parable about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus who both die, and when the rich man discovers his fate in the fires of Hades, he wants an emissary sent back from the dead to warn his five brothers not fall into the same careless ways and suffer in eternal anguish as he is.  He is told that even if someone rises from the dead to warn them, they won’t listen.  I don’t think it’s intended to be an accurate description of the afterlife; I think Jesus was simply using a popular fiction to make a point.  Well, I can’t help it, the darn story makes me think of Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol coming back from the grave to warn old Scrooge to mend his ways so he won’t end up like him, forever dragging the chains of his misdeeds around with him.

Both tales make basically the same point, but I have to confess I like Dickens’s version better.  I think it’s because the scriptural story ends with a negative judgment: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  Dickens, on the other hand, ends on a positive note: Scrooge is redeemed by his visitations from beyond, and, as Dickens writes, “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”  But there is one brief phrase in Jesus’ parable that knocks me out.  It’s when the rich man is wailing from the depths of Hades and looks up to heaven begging Father Abraham for some relief from his torment.  The answer begins with these haunting words: “Child, remember . . . .”  Both Jesus’s parable and Dickens’s tale are told for our sake.  Both are cautionary tales to remind us how terribly important it is to remember – to remember our own histories and take lessons from them – to remember who we are.

Robert Douglas Fairhurst, in his editorial notes to Dickens’ yarn relates that, “In April 1842, just over a year before he described Marley’s ghost dragging his heavy chains across the floor, [Dickens] had visited the shackled prisoners in the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and wrote to John Forester of being haunted by ‘a horrible thought’: ‘What if ghosts be one of the terrors of these jails? . . . The utter solitude by day and night; the hours of darkness; the silence of death; the mind for ever brooding on melancholy themes, and having no relief . . . The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that not a few of these men . . . are nightly visited by spectres.'” Fairhurst comments, “Perhaps it is not surprising that Dickens was troubled by the idea that prisoners were haunted by the ghosts of the past.”

There is something terribly important about remembering, whether it is, as Scrooge was forced to do, remembering the missed opportunities, careless adventures, and failures of love, or remembering the best in who we once were and could be again, who we were created to be, and might become.

I understand that experts about brain function are learning that memories are not as dependable as we often think.  It seems that each time we bring up a past incident we reconstruct that memory bit by bit.  And each time it’s recalled, the memory is subject to some minor revision, so that something recollected in our minds numerous times might seem as if it’s etched in stone up there somewhere, but our memory might actually be quite a distortion of what actually took place.

Consequently, remembering is a tricky thing.  We may think we are remembering clearly and accurately, and we may simply be fooling ourselves.  I’ve come to see this in my own experience.  Just a few days ago I had intended to plug in the chord that recharges the generator battery in the basement.  I wanted to plug it in at night before bedtime and then unplug it in the morning.  So, I left a note to myself on the kitchen counter about the generator battery.  In the morning, when I got up and went into the kitchen, I saw the note on the counter and beat myself up for being so stupid as to forget to plug in the chord when there was a note sitting there plain as day.  So, I decided to leave the note there and go down and plug in the chord and then unplug it in the afternoon.  So, I went down to the basement and behold the chord was plugged in.  And try as I might, I could not remember plugging that darned thing in.  I searched my memory and there was none there.  I have more and more of these kind of episodes, and suspect that many of you do as well.

There was an old Earth, Wind and Fire song that went “Do you remember the 21st night of September? . . . While chasing the clouds away.”  Well, the 21st night of September was just one week ago.  How many of you remember what you were doing last Sunday night?  I’ll bet if a husband and wife tried answering that question they might get into a significant disagreement: “We just watched TV and went to bed.”  “No, that was the night the Joneses came over.” “No that was Saturday night.”  “No, I’m sure it was Sunday because we went to church that morning.”  . . .and on, and on.

So the same is true of remembering our past selves.  I think you and I are inclined to unknowingly edit those memories, sometimes to make them a bit rosier, and sometimes to make them even more heinous.  Maybe that’s why it took the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to point out to old Scrooge what his past was truly like and what that might mean for him, and maybe that’s why Father Abraham told the rich man in Hades that people needed Moses and the prophets to make it all clear to them, and that if they didn’t listen to them they wouldn’t see the truth even if someone rose from the dead.  It seems that you and I can’t remember ourselves on our own.  We need help.

I have a confession to make: Die Hard is my favorite movie of all time.  I’ve seen it so many times that I think I know all the lines by heart.  But it never ceases to amaze me that lines I think I have down pat, I discover I’ve remembered incorrectly.  Having the movie on DVD allows me to watch it over and over and to thereby keep correcting my memory (Dadgie has always loved that).

I think that’s a lot like what we do here in this place.  We gather every week and sing some of the same hymns, hear passages of scripture read that we’ve heard time and again throughout our lives, and listen to a preacher say some of the same things over and over – we had a professor in seminary who said that every preacher has only three basic sermons, and if he’s lucky, one original idea.  So why do we do it?  Why do we keep coming here, offering similar prayers, going back time and again to the same Bible that tells the same stories.  I’ll tell you why.  It’s so that we can remember.  It’s so that we can remember who we are, who we were created to be, and who we are intended to be.  We need this Bible, and these same old stories told in the same ways for thousands of years, because it’s all too easy to fool ourselves into thinking we know – thinking that our picture of Divine reality, and our place in it is clear and etched in stone.  We need to keep getting jolted by things in the Bible that surprise us because they remind us of a part of ourselves that we may have conveniently forgotten or inadvertently distorted.

G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, said that some things, indeed, get repeated over and over but God just might be involved in what seems to us like monotonous ritual: “It might be true that the sun rises regularly because God never gets tired of raising the sun,” Chesterton says. “Its routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.  The thing I mean can be seen . . . in children, when they find some name or joke that they especially enjoy.  The child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore, they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, ‘Do it again,’ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But,” Chesterton goes on, “perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again,’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but is never tired of making them.  It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy. . . .”

Chesterton may be speaking a bit tongue in cheek, but he’s onto a profound truth.  It is the repetition of goodness that helps us to remember what it is to be good.  It is the weekly repetition of bringing our offerings that helps us remember what it is to be giving.  It is the repeated embrace, and same genuine, forgiving smile that reminds us what it is to love.  It is the same Bible stories retold until we think we have memorized every line (even though we keep getting surprised) that helps us remember who we are, and whose we are.

So, in case you’ve forgotten, a little reminder of who you are: You are a rare and precious gift.  And you are gifted – each of us in different ways. You carry within you the very divine image of the creator.  You hold the capacity for great love, and great forgiveness, and great blessing.  There is no other you in all the universe, and so you have been given the grace to use yourself wisely and generously.

“Child, remember . . . .”  Father Abraham told the rich man to remember what he did in life and how, in his wealth and comfort, he never noticed the beggar Lazarus in his misery.  And when the Ghost of Christmas Past led Scrooge to his boyhood home, he asked if Scrooge remembered the way.  Scrooge replied, “‘Remember it? . . . I could walk it blindfold.’  ‘Strange to have forgotten it for so many years,’ observed the ghost.”

Maybe not so strange after all, it turns out.  You and I are very good at distorting our memories, losing track of what truly matters, and convincing ourselves of the certainty of things that are merely ephemeral shadows of eternal truth.  I for one thank the Lord for old hymns, familiar scripture, repetitious greetings, and hugs that are as comfortable as an old shoe.  I am grateful for this table around which we gather once each month to remember with bread and wine the same Christ over and over.  I am grateful because in these rituals of faithfulness, these patterns of being, these circles of love, we receive the rare gift of remembering who we are.

September 21-2025

“True Riches”

The parable you heard read this morning is perhaps the most bizarre and hotly debated utterance said to have emanated from the mouth of Jesus.  It’s been called the “parable of the dishonest steward.”  You weren’t imagining it; you heard it right.  Jesus described a guy – a financial manager for a wealthy individual – who realized he was about to be sacked, so he engaged in a little graft on the side with his employer’s finances to make some friends and try to set himself up for the lean times ahead.  And this scoundrel was commended by his employer, and by Jesus, who went on to say to his disciples: “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”  Wouldn’t you like to have been able to go up to Jesus at that moment, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “What?”  Well, I guess I kind of did that, at least in my own mind.  And I got a surprising and potentially life changing answer.

I think I have to start at the beginning – at least the beginning for me around this issue of wealth and the gospel.  It was my very first pastorate (in fact I was still in seminary, and working at a church part-time).  A doctor in that congregation spoke to me after a sermon in which I talked about my usual bill of fare: Jesus’ affinity for the poor, and money as the root of all evil, etc., etc.  He said something that shocked me, but got me thinking, and I guess I’ve never quite stopped thinking about it.  He said, “I think I have a gospel responsibility to make as much money as I possibly can.”  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, he continued: “Because the more money and the more resources I have, the more I have to do good with, and to help those who are less advantaged.”  I’ve been scratching my head over that ever since.  It’s pretty hard logic to argue against.

In fact, when I look at Bill and Melinda Gates, and all they have done and continue to do with their tens of billions of dollars to save lives, improve living conditions, advance educational opportunities, and bring hope to hopeless people around this globe, as well as all they’ve done to encourage others among the uber-wealthy to do the same, I find myself saying, “God bless you both.”

Now, I don’t know exactly how every dollar was acquired that Bill Gates made at Microsoft and through other investments, or how Warren Buffet who has contributed billions himself to the foundation has come by every dollar of his fortune.  There is no reason whatsoever to assume any dishonesty from either of them.  On the other hand, for anyone to make that kind of money in this kind of world, they have to be at least pretty savvy about working the system to their advantage.

Which brings us ‘round full circle to Jesus.  When I tapped him on the shoulder in my mind he seemed to confirm my thinking.  He turned and said to me, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”  Not surprising, really, because that’s exactly what he said to his disciples.  But he went on to say, both to them and to me: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”  At which point in my mind I tapped him on the shoulder again and said, “What?”  Doesn’t it sound to you like he’s arguing both sides of the debate?

That’s when it came to me.  The central question is: what is money?  Is it slave or master?  On that question hangs a moral truth that destroys and redeems individuals and nations.  To “serve wealth,” in Jesus’ words, is to make it your master.  It is to acquire for the sake of acquisition, to hoard for the purpose of self-gratification, comfort, and power.  It is to be addicted to the accumulation of wealth and to the efforts that go into possessing it.  If, on the other hand, wealth is your slave, it is simply a powerful tool used to accomplish other purposes.  In the hands of a person of generous heart, great wealth can be a source of great blessing.

So, Jesus makes the cryptic statement, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”  I think he’s saying that, by whatever means one acquires a fortune, if it becomes your master instead of your slave, how can you expect to have your priorities straightened out?  If you can’t let go of your money in order to use it for just and worthy ends, then how can you expect to recognize and seize those things in life that truly matter – what he calls “true riches?”

So what are “true riches?”  He doesn’t spell it out in so many words, but it’s in there, written between the lines.  First of all, Jesus shocks his listeners, and he shocks us with a story about a dishonest manager.  But when you think about it, that was Jesus’s style.  He spent his time with the tax collectors and sinners.  He had dinner with those he himself reviled.  He spoke to disreputable women and walked among lepers.  Why wouldn’t he talk about a rogue in loving terms?  After all, you and I are rogues too.  I think true riches have to do with recognizing who we are and to whom we are related in the family of faith.  I think of Mother Teresa as being one of the richest women who ever walked on this earth.

William Willimon remembers “Miles Tomlin of Holy Trinity Brompton, in London, [saying] that when he was at theological college he had an old wise tutor who often greeted the seminarians, at the beginning of class, with the question, ‘Good morning, how are the prostitutes?’  He was not making a negative judgment on the morals of the seminarians.  Rather,” says Willimon, “he was reminding them, teaching them, that, as Christians, their concern was to be for the poor, the downtrodden, the needy, the sinful, and yes, the prostitutes.  That was the supreme test for how they were doing as future Christian leaders.  Christianity may be seen as lifetime training in how to care more for the well-being of those outside the circumscribed realm of the faithful (the neighbor) than we do for those of us who presume to be on the inside.”¹  Willimon had it right. “True riches” are found in reaching beyond one’s self to touch the hand of one of “the least of these” and to recognize in that touch an inseparable bond.

Secondly, Jesus says, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”  I think he’s suggesting that “true riches” are something that we actually already possess; mostly, we just don’t know it.  I think it has to do with an awakening of the heart, a stirring inside that sees all people and all Being as One.  It is a mindset of peacefulness and joy that can be heightened in the recognition of nature’s beauty, or the compassionate face of a friend.  Jesus was always pointing us in this direction.  He said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” and “consider the lilies,” and “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”  True riches are the gifts of perspective that allow us to see ourselves and one another through larger eyes and with larger hearts.  And it lives within us; it is already ours.  It is the capacity to feel deeply and love fully.  I think it’s what Tennyson was getting at in his verses written upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam.  He wrote:

That which we dare invoke to bless;

Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;

He, They, One, All; within, without;

The power in darkness whom we guess.

I found Him not in world or sun,

Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;

Nor through the questions men may try,

The petty cobwebs we have spun.

If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,

I heard a voice “Believe no more”

And heard an ever-breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt

The freezing reason’s colder part,

And like a man in wrath the heart

Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.”²

“True riches” are the whole and centered heart’s instinctive answer to the storms and trials of life.

And finally, again, Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” “True riches” have to do with being in communion with Divinity.  To be truly rich is to know one’s self as embraced by the arms of eternity.  But that embrace is not necessarily all cozy and warm.  The riches of the Divine Spirit of Holiness in one’s life are often expensive.  You can be led into places and called upon for challenges that can turn your world inside out.  Don Juel, who used to teach New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, related a story of once leading some junior high students in a Bible study.  He told the kids that when Jesus was baptized the heavens were ripped open and we could see into heaven.  He said to them, “‘Do you know what that means, kids?  That means we can see God because of the baptism of Jesus, we can actually get to God.’

“The kid on the end, the kid who did not want to be there, squirmed in his seat.  He turned and said, ‘That isn’t what it means.’

“Juel, a little irritated, looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah, what does it mean?’

“‘It doesn’t mean that we can get to God,’ the kid said.  ‘It means that God can get to us.  And the world isn’t safe anymore.’”³

That kid got it.  “True riches” involve serving the Lord with one’s life and one’s resources.  And that’s not a prescription for indifference or for safety.

So, forty-six years later, how would I answer the guy in my old church who said he had a gospel responsibility to earn as much money as he could?  I guess I’d say, it all depends on who’s the master and who’s the servant in his relationship with wealth, and on whether he is prepared to take up his “true riches.”

¹ William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, October 23, 2011, “The Whole Gospel – In Two Sentences.”

² Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892, from “In Memoriam.”

³ Quoted by Tom Long in Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry, edited by Ann M. Svennungsen and Melissa Wiginton, Abingdon Press, 2005, pp. 40-41.

September 14, 2025

Born Again

You know what irritates the heck out of me?  It’s what has happened to the phrase, “born again.”  It’s been taken over by fundamentalists and evangelicals and turned into a code word for membership in a club.  If someone wears the “born again Christian” label, they are automatically identified with a whole laundry list of conservative religious and political views.  It means they’re “pro-life” when it comes to abortion, “pro-death” when it comes to the death penalty, “anti-science” when it comes to teaching evolution or sponsoring stem-cell research, and just plain “anti-” when it comes to homosexuality.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.”  I really don’t think he had any political or social issues in mind at the time.  In fact, it’s pretty clear that he was offering Nicodemus a pun – a play on words.  The Greek phrase gennethenai anothen can be translated “born again” or “born from above.”  Nicodemus hears it as “you must be born again”, but it’s clear as the conversation proceeds that Jesus is talking about being “born from above.”  He says, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”  The contrast he’s making is between that which is born below (i.e. “of the flesh”) and that which is born from above (“of the spirit”).  But the fact that it can be taken either way is quite intentional.  It’s one of those wonderful gems of Biblical literature that draw you into multiple layers of understanding and challenge you to think more deeply into life.

Have you been “born again” (or “born from above”)?  I have.  It happened when I was about twelve years old.  I went through what we Baptists called a “membership class” for young people (we congregationalists call it “confirmation”).  At the end of the class, I knew it was time for me to be baptized, and I knew it was expected of me particularly since I was the preacher’s kid.  So, I was baptized.  But I also felt very strongly about making a personal decision to follow Christ.  I wasn’t entirely sure what all that would mean, but it did feel important to me, and the water of that baptistry seemed powerful and renewing.  Of course, my brush with holiness was short lived.  The next day, after school, I was back to my evil ways: sneaking off to the pool hall with my friends, and listening to Dion sing “I’m a Wanderer.”

 I was “born . . . again” about five years later when a Sunday School teacher seemed really interested in what I had to say.  In fact, he seemed really interested in what all the kids in the class had to say.  I thought he was a pretty neat guy, and I thought for the first time in years that maybe going to Sunday School could be a cool thing.  We talked about stuff we cared about.  Something touched me in that class, and I started to think for the first time that maybe I could have a faith that was my own, not just going along with what my parents believed, or thought I should believe.  But that didn’t last long either.  I ended up spending my days thinking about a girl named Judy, and decided I might convert to Judaism after all – Judy was Jewish.

I was “born again” again when I was in my early twenties.  I had been on the police force for a year or two, and joined a church in town because I thought it might look good in my personnel file when I went for promotions.  I accepted a position on the board of deacons, then I never showed up for a single deacons’ meeting.  They asked me to teach Sunday School, and I thought that would make me look like a real solid, community-oriented guy, too, so I did it.  But I had no idea what I was doing, and became so intimidated trying to teach a bunch of Jr. High kids about something I didn’t understand that I gave it up in a matter of weeks.  Through all of my irresponsible dabbling in being a “church guy” I never heard a single word of criticism from that lovely bunch of people.  I found only acceptance, genuine friendship, and support there.  It was the seed bed of that loving bunch of people that gave a context to my experience of calling into the ministry.  O yes, I was “born again” then, too – when I heard the voice of eternity whispering in my ear and sending me a whole new direction in life.

I was “born again” another time when a seminary professor encouraged me to look deep inside and come up with my own statement of theology.  My studies basically took me through a process of tearing down every construct of belief that I had erected to that point and starting over from scratch.  I found myself asking, “OK, Mike, forget what you think the Bible, or the teachers, or the church, or anyone else says you should believe, what, exactly, do you believe, and what don’t you believe?”  That’s when I really started to own my faith.  Someone was actually giving me the freedom to throw out anything I didn’t want to swallow, and making me look into my own heart and head for answers.  That was amazingly liberating.  And it’s when I actually started to “get it.”

Within a few years, my marriage fell apart, and my fledgling career in the ministry was on the rocks.  I was depressed, and in an emotional and spiritual crisis of immense proportions.

But, as you can probably guess, I was “born again” when an angel came down from heaven and turned my life around. Her name was Dadgie.  In fact, I’ve been “born again” so many times now, I’ve lost track.  I was “born again” just the other day when Dadgie and I had a meaningful and moving conversation with an old friend.  I’m “born again” just about every time I come here and have my heart touched by each of you.

By tomorrow I’ll probably be out on the road somewhere in my truck, frustrated at trying to get somewhere faster than I really need to, and yelling at some idiot for cutting me off in traffic, and feeling a corner of my soul turn dark and cold.  But it doesn’t concern me much, because by now I know that the Divine plan for me is to be “born again.”

I love the story that Dadgie told me of a couple who were in a church group with her years ago in a church in upstate New York.  Bob and Ann were sharing a story about something that happened to them on the previous Sunday afternoon.  Bob was out working in the yard, when the pastor of a local fundamentalist Baptist church approached.  Without any words of introduction, the preacher started in, “Brother, have you been born again?”  Bob put down his rake and looked at the man.  He paused for a long while, thinking and mulling the question over in his mind.  Finally, he answered, “Well, sometimes I’d say yes, and sometimes, no.”  That’s all the preacher needed.  He launched into his rehearsed Bible verses to explain why Bob just didn’t understand what being “born again” was all about, and why he desperately needed spiritual regeneration once and for all.  He wasn’t getting very far with Bob and his frustration was mounting.  But in the middle of it, Ann came outside to see what was going on.  As she stepped out of the house, the clergyman looked up and addressed her straight off.  “Sister, have you been born again?”  he asked.  Ann stopped on the stairs and stood looking at him, considering her response.  Finally, she said, “Well, sometimes, I’d say yes, and sometimes, no.”  At this, the preacher was so dismayed that he simply shook his head and walked off.

Being “born again” is being “born from above”.  It is the bewildering and besetting Spirit that blows in and out of our lives like the wind and summons us to a deepening relationship with eternal Grace – the Ground of our Being.  According to Jesus, the Spirit is unpredictable, “blowing where it chooses.”  And those who are born of this Spirit find it to be mysterious.  We may sense it, like hearing a sound, but we don’t’ know where it’s going to come from next, or when it will blow by us.  But Jesus made it clear that, although the path we take when we are “born from above” is a perplexing thing, like walking through a windstorm, the end result is redemption and wholeness.  He said that the purpose of the one he called his “Father” was “not to condemn the world,” but that “the world might be saved.”

That means that whatever it is to be “born again” – or “born from above,” it’s something that leads to “salvation.”  And what’s that?  Salvation is synonymous with redemption, recovery, retrieval.  It’s like what happens when you return empty Coke bottles and they clean them up and fill them with new soda.  It’s like what happens when you pick an old basket out of a pile of trash and take it home and fill it with flowers.  That’s the sort of thing that happens to us every day – at least, it does to me.  Just when I feel like I’ve messed up about as badly as I can, someone comes along and forgives me.   Just when I think the world is going to hell in a handbasket, a little child’s smile saves my soul.  Just when I figure there’s nothing left to learn, I get slapped upside the head by the Spirit and the lights go on again.

Yes, I’ve been “born again” – and again, and again, and again.  In the final analysis, I think this is what it means to be “born again” or “born from above”:  It is to struggle against the principalities and powers, and to sometimes fail, but sometimes win a small victory for justice.  It is to fall flat on your face and learn something by it.  It is to sometimes take two steps back for every step forward, but end up growing and becoming more than you were.  It is to feel, in rare and privileged moments, the wind of eternity in your face, and be reminded that you are one with the universe, and the Source of Existence.  It is to wake up every morning and put your slippers on, shake the sleep out of your eyes and plug in the coffee pot, stand in front of the bathroom mirror and say, “OK, Lord, here I am . . . again.”

September 7, 2025

Altered Paths

I remember well a trip some years ago that Dadgie and I took back to Rochester, New York to visit with her family. While there we had an amazing day of journeying back in time. It was like diving into a deep pool of memory. We began by going back to the seminary from which we both graduated, Colgate Rochester Divinity School. The school, like most liberal, Protestant institutions is failing. In fact, they were selling the entire campus with its awe-inspiring central building whose gothic spires rise high over the hill on which it sits. It has all been unloaded because they have insufficient enrollment to make it viable. This is heartbreaking for us, so we took quite a bit of time to walk through the halls, talk with people, and remember. We then drove to the house Dadgie grew up in and saw the streets she walked, the grade school and high school she attended. Then we drove out to the towns on the outskirts of Rochester where we were each pastoring churches when we were married (the towns were about thirty miles or so apart, and we both stayed in our pastorates after our marriage; so for three years lived in one town half the week and the other town the other half of the week). While there, we saw the houses we lived in and the church buildings where we served. Needless to say it was a day of rich and even overwhelming memories. But one of the things that struck me most was the sense of how our individual paths through life and our merged path through life followed a course that neither of us would ever have imagined early on. Wonderful and fulfilling as it has been, it has also all seemed amazingly unlikely.

How many here this morning would have predicted thirty, forty, fifty years ago what our lives would be like today? It seems for many of us, at least, altered paths have been the norm rather than the exception. But how many of us would revise those courses through life if we had the opportunity? Not many, I imagine.

Maybe the prime example of an altered path through life is the remarkable story of Onesemus. He was mentioned in the reading you heard this morning from Paul’s letter to Philemon. From the text of this letter to Paul’s friend, it’s clear that Onesimus had at one time been Philemon’s slave, but somehow, he ended up living and working with Paul while Paul was in prison. We really don’t know how Onesimus came to leave the service of Philemon or how he ended up with Paul. But it’s quite likely that he ran away and found Paul, having known of him through his master, Philemon. Paul writes that “Formerly he was useless to you . . .” and “If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.” These words imply that the slave, Onesimus, had in some way “wronged” Philemon and become “useless” to him. It certainly sounds like he had run away.

And it also sounds like Paul is trying to get Philemon to release Onesimus to him. He writes, “I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.” Paul wants Onesimus to keep working with him as a free man. He writes, “Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother – especially to me but how much more to you.” And in this letter Paul refers to Onesimus as “my own heart,” and says that he, Paul, has become a “father” to him, and then refers to Onesimus as a “beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord.” “A brother . . . in the Lord” is code for one who has converted to Christianity. Onesimus, the slave, has been working with Paul as a sort of a Christian protégé.

And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” For that we look at a letter not found in the Bible. It was written by Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch in Syria. Ignatius had been arrested as a Christian, and was being sent to Rome for trial. The guards halted the journey for a time at the city of Smyrna. While they were there, Christians of the region knew of their presence, and of their prominent prisoner, the Bishop of Antioch. So they sent a delegation to visit the prisoner. And what we learn from Bishop Ignatius’ letter to the church of Ephesus, is that the head of this delegation was none other than the Bishop of Ephesus himself. And his name? His name was Onesimus. Here is evidence of a path in life altered by the power of the Spirit: the slave who became Bishop.

How many such remarkable stories are there of people whose lives were transformed in ways they never could have dreamed of? There are probably many such tales that could be related among those of you gathered here this morning. It seems that life keeps presenting new paths, and those paths frequently lead to greater things – particularly the less traveled ones. This is one good definition of grace.

But, as always, there is a caution. It comes from our other reading for this morning. The Prophet Jeremiah is commanded to go down to the potter’s house where he watches a potter refashioning a work of clay at the wheel. And the inspiration comes to him that the Lord Almighty can refashion his plans and remake his people. Those nations who have been presumed to have no hope can be lifted to new heights, and those who have assumed their privilege or righteousness can be brought to ruin. It’s all a matter of how faithful each nation of people is to the ways of justice and mercy. Another way of putting this is: what goes around comes around. This is a cautionary tale for individuals as well as nations. Those who traffic in injustice will ultimately receive a sentence greater than their crime; those who live by mercy and loving-kindness will, in the end, find an overabundance of good friends. This should give us pause when you and I ignore the needs of others because our agendas are too full or our personal concerns are too weighty. It should also give any nation pause when it goes to bed with ruthless dictators out of a sense of expediency or narrow national interests. In truth, many of us Western nations have seen the sad consequences of such past decisions.

In short, as was the case for the slave, Onesimus, Divine grace can change our lives in dramatic ways, but only if we are prepared to live as people of grace. That grace, offered to us in a thousand ways, becomes imbedded in our hearts if we let it, so that we ourselves become instruments of transformation and hope.

I’m sure most of you know the story of the song, Amazing Grace, but it bears repeating. John Newton was a slave ship captain who, through a gradual process of conversion became an ardent abolitionist. His life was turned around by his commitment to follow Christ. Thirty-four years after giving up the slave trade, he wrote, “It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”1 He wrote the hymn we often sing and hold dear to our hearts today. Before our communion hymn, I’d like us to all sing the first verse of his hymn together (the words are in your bulletin), but with a twist (you may notice the change to the words in your buletin). With apologies to John Newton, who understandably was revulsed by his having trafficked in the slave trade, I’d like us to not refer to ourselves as wretches. I like to think that it is grace that sets us free – free, in fact to go home. Another line in the hymn says “grace will lead me home.” It is grace that affords us the opportunity to be “at home” with ourselves no matter where we are, or in what circumstances we find ourselves. And then, when we encounter another person we can have the grace to metaphorically welcome them into our “home” and share all that we have with them – ultimately, that means we can have the grace to be free to share ourselves, truly and honestly. So, reflecting on the power of the Spirit at work in our lives, and the way in which, if our hearts are open to it, our paths are altered by that “Amazing Grace,”

let’s sing it together:

[Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved and set me free!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.]

I would suggest that this be our keynote as we begin another church year. May we continue to be people of grace, agents of mercy, and therefore have our own paths altered and lives transformed and surprised by the Spirit of Holiness.

August 31, 2025

Table Manners

When I was a boy, dinner time often resembled an extended lecture.  “Mike, go wash your hands before you sit down.  Mind your manners.  Sit up straight and get your elbows off the table.  Foot off the chair, please.  Don’t chew with your mouth open, and don’t talk while you’re chewing your food.  Pick that up with your fork, please; not your fingers. That’s enough, boys; no fighting at the table.  Don’t waste food.  You will sit here at the table until you finish eating what’s on your plate.  There are starving children in China who would give anything to have what you have there.”  My parents, it seems, were determined to take all the fun out of dinnertime.

So, I had a rather Pavlovian recoil response when I came across this lectionary passage from Luke and heard Jesus giving a lecture on table manners.  I did find it intriguing, though.  I wondered two things: why in the world would he offer this little speech, and why would Luke bother to include it in his gospel?

Well, it didn’t take long to figure out that he was basically expanding on a passage of scripture from Proverbs – our other lectionary reading for today.  The basic idea is that a dinner guest should not sit down at an honored place, but in the lowliest seat at the table.  That way he won’t be embarrassed by being told to move to a lower place, but will be honored by being summoned to a higher place.  And then, Jesus adds a comment to his host about how to make up a guest list.  He tells him not to invite all his friends who will then feel the social obligation to repay him with a reciprocal invitation, but instead “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” who cannot repay him.

The point, it seems, is not simply about dinner etiquette, it’s about humility – the humility of a guest not assuming a place of honor, and the humility of a host recognizing the equal place and value of all people, regardless of station or means.  So, it turns out that was Jesus’ point, and that’s why it’s in the gospel of Luke; it’s not just about table manners after all, it’s an object lesson in humility.

A sermon about humility may seem like slim pickin’s.  After all, what’s to be said?  “Be humble, don’t be proud.  Amen.”  But it seems to me that what Jesus is getting at here reflects an entire way of life, a way of being and a way of looking at the world that applies no matter who you are, or where you are – a simple dinner guest, a wealthy host, or a poor soul off the street.  And as such, maybe pervades more of our experience, and touches us more deeply than we might guess.

I spent a little time ruminating about what it might mean to have such complete and pervasive humility take over one’s life, and it surprised me – not slim pickin’s at all; there’s a full meal to be had here, so long as we approach it with proper manners.

For one thing, I don’t know about you, but I suspect that all too often when I’m invited into conversation with someone about public policy, sports, literature, politics, or religion, I figuratively plop myself down in the seat of honor with a toothpick in my mouth, lean my chair back, and stick my feet up on the table.  You see, I have so many opinions about things.  I know what I believe about almost any topic that can come up, and I’m more than eager to share my wisdom with others at the drop of a hat.  One of the problems with this habit is that it’s rather embarrassing when someone happens to know more about a topic than I do, and summarily moves me out of my catbird’s seat to a lower place at the table.

Our tendency to shoot from the hip with presumptions, opinions, and supposed facts is, I think, very human.  I guess it’s part of our natural inclination to compete – like our ancestors competed for the last scrap of meat from the saber-toothed tiger they speared.  But going to battle over ideas doesn’t do much for our souls, or our minds for that matter.  Hegel’s dialectic notwithstanding, when two people start throwing spit-balls to see who comes out on top, more often they both end up on the bottom.

What might happen if any of us instead chose to approach every person, every conversation, every encounter with a primary desire to listen and learn?  What if we always took the lowest seat at the “debate table,” and waited to see if others had something more honorable or more commanding to offer?  How might it change us, and how might it change our world?  It could be far more significant even than learning to keep our elbows off the table.

Another very human and very unhelpful tendency is to look no further than our friends, our clan, our people, our party, our “kind” when making up a list of those worthy to dine with us at the feast of ideas and experiences.  I remember once hearing on the radio a member of the “Tea Party” speaking about Glen Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial.  She said that those who attend these sorts of events, are (and I quote) “the cream of the crop of the world’s population.”  Now, that’s one incredible statement.

We may laugh at that kind of blatant self-aggrandizement, but you and I do a similar thing, albeit more subtly, when we look out at the world around us.  If you examine our reactions and views closely you have to admit that we often operate out of an unspoken assumption that Americans are brighter, more enlightened, less backward, all-around generally more developed human beings than Africans or Afghans or Iranians.  We tend to think of those in another political party or another branch of Christianity, or from another part of the country or a different background as unfortunate souls who just didn’t have the opportunity to learn the things we’ve learned, or are blinded by their upbringing or their environment and can’t see things the way they really are.

How often do we take the time to examine the weaknesses of our own heritage, the holes in our own systems, the inadequacies of our own group?  Might we actually grow and be enlightened by inviting to our table of experience the very ones we generally dismiss?  Might we become more whole by rubbing elbows with those whose lives and ways are totally other than our own?  Expanding our guest list might actually serve to expand our world view.

But if we truly allow the kind of humility Jesus was getting at to take root in our lives and remake us, it might not only affect how we relate to others, it might change how we relate to ourselves!  We might find ourselves approaching everything differently.  The other day, Dadgie’s daughter was visiting and we spoke about reading Andy Borowitz’s daily email report.  Borowitz, in case you haven’t heard of him writes “the news that’s not the news.”  It’s his hilarious take on current events, coming up with fictional accounts where he twists things around and reports it as if it were a news story. I told Barb that starting off the day with a good belly laugh always feels good for the soul. You know a sense of humor can do you a lot of good.  It’s wonderful to laugh — but more wonderful to laugh especially at yourself!  That’s an even better way of starting off the day.  I think that’s similar to what I was hearing from Jesus.  Developing the ability to laugh at one’s self is like going for the lowliest seat at your host’s table.  It’s all about not taking yourself so darned seriously.

I don’t think laughing at yourself, listening to others and trying to learn from them instead of pounding them with your own views, or recognizing the gifts and strengths of different cultures and backgrounds and ideas means you stop caring about the things you believe in.  I don’t think it means you give up on your own values or on trying to make a difference.  It just means you approach it all very differently, perhaps with a lighter, more gentle heart; perhaps with the calm of one who has finally discovered their place in the grand scheme of things, and finds it mildly amusing.

I’ll never forget the time, many years ago (back in the days of the nuclear disarmament movement), I had the privilege of hearing the great preacher Gardner Taylor speak at a gathering of peace activists.  He talked about the importance of trusting in Divine Love and recognizing that we’re not in charge of the future, the Lord is.  After his address, a woman in the crowd raised her hand and spoke about her work in the peace movement.  She wondered if he was telling us to just stop working for change because it’s all up to the Lord anyway.  Dr. Taylor said, “Oh no.  Work for change.  Do everything you can to bring about the change you want to see.  Pour your efforts into it.  But do so with quiet confidence, knowing that the Lord is the Lord of history and the Lord who transcends history, and that the future is safe in that Lord’s hands.”

That’s one very good way of not taking yourself too seriously.  Keep yourself out of the highest seat at the table – that chair is reserved for the One who truly is in charge of the future.

Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t forget to laugh at yourself along the way.  Just don’t do it with your mouth full.

August 24, 2025

Another Thing I Wish He Hadn’t Said

From time to time I screw my courage to the sticking place and preach a sermon on one of those things I wish Jesus had never said. He said a lot of those kind of things.
It reminds me of the story about Bob Zuppke who was the football coach at Illinois back when Knute Rockne was at Notre Dame. Like Rockne, Bob Zuppke was a master of the half-time pep talk; some thought he was even better. In one particular game, the fighting Illini was woefully behind at the half. Zuppke knew that he had to give one of his most dramatic speeches to enliven his team. And he did. As he neared the conclusion of his half-time talk, his voice became louder, his pleas more dramatic, and finally he pointed to the door at the other end of the locker room saying, “And now let’s go through that door and on to victory!” The team rose as one man, tears welling in their eyes, their throats choked with emotion, and they ran through that door . . . right into the university swimming pool.
Sometimes I think some of the things Jesus said were like that – well intentioned, but basically bad advice.
I know better. But some of his words I find pretty hard to swallow. I realize it’s not him – it’s got to be me – but I read them, then I read them again, and I find myself saying, “I wish he hadn’t said that.”
Like when he said, as Matthew records, “Till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
“Not an Iota.”
Now, I wish he hadn’t said that. Because, as far as I can see, he’s talking here about the books of the law in the Old Testament. In other words, out of all those dusty old manuscripts full of endless legal mumbo-jumbo from at least Genesis through Deuteronomy – where, for instance, descriptions were provided for the right kind of heifer to be sacrificed in just the right way, and how anyone who had a blemish or disability was not allowed to come near the sacred offering, and how one who blasphemed the name of the Lord should be put to death by stoning – that, out of all that, Jesus was not relaxing, and not allowing anyone else to relax, any of the provisions of those laws, or even to change one single tiny letter of one word of it. Not an Iota!
Now, I’ve heard all sorts of explanations for what Jesus is really saying here (you know, under the surface), what preachers will tell you Jesus would have said if he’d really said exactly what he’d intended to say. For instance: Jesus is just speaking to a Jewish audience and he doesn’t want them to think he’s down on Jewish traditions like the law, so he says this to kind of keep them on his side. Or, the explanation that’s most tempting to me: Jesus is here just pointing out that the law code of Old Testament Judaism is to be kept intact simply to bring people to a realization that they can’t ultimately fulfill all its demands and they are therefore dependent on Divine grace for salvation. And another one I’ve heard goes like this: Jesus is operating out of a kind of “crisis ethic.” In other words, he thought the kingdom, and judgement, and damnation, and the whole nine yards were just around the corner, so everyone should wise up quick and be as virtuous and righteous as possible in order to get to heaven. Of course the never stated, but clearly implied corollary of that is that now, since we know he was all wrong about the timing, we can relax.
All of the sermons I’ve heard on this text (and, I must confess, a few that I’ve preached) add up to basically the same thing: that Jesus really meant just about the opposite of what he actually said.
That would be convenient to believe; really much more comfortable. But I can’t help it; when he says, “Not an iota!” I get the chilling feeling that he means just that.
So what are we to do with these words of Isaiah, from the very same sacred writings to which Jesus referred?
“Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
I confess to being a little confused. It sounds like the Day of Atonement commanded by the Lord in the book of Leviticus is not, in fact, what that same Lord wants of the people. By Jesus’ standard, it sounds like God Almighty will be called “least in the kingdom of heaven.”
And what about all the stuff from the Apostle Paul about grace? Paul wipes out a ton of iotas. He says, “You have died to the law,” and “By grace you have been saved through faith,” and “The law was our custodian until Christ came, . . . but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian.”
Those are the kind of things I like to hear. I mean, another word for custodian is jailer; and those old testament laws can be pretty imprisoning! I’d like to throw out not only the iotas and dots of the law, but a lot of the ABC’s and XYZ’s! I like my religion comfortable. Which is why I squirm in my seat and complain when I hear Jesus say “not an iota will pass from the law.”
So what’s this all about? What’s Jesus up to here? Frankly, I’m not sure. But, being clueless hasn’t stopped me from preaching a sermon yet.
Seriously, maybe that’s the place to begin. I think clueless is not such a bad thing to be. If I could stand before you Sunday after Sunday and offer thorough explications and explanations of every passage of scripture and every point of theology, neatly wrapped up with a tidy bow on top, something tells me I’d be dishing out more hooey than authenticity. And I think that’s one of the biggest things for each of us to take from this; developing the capacity to live with unanswered questions and disturbing dilemmas is, I believe, essential to a strong and sustaining faith. So, I urge upon all of us to simply take in these words of Jesus and let their discontinuity bounce around in our heads for a while.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
But, there does have to be more to it, doesn’t there? If we get stuck with nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders, we run the risk of becoming theological couch potatoes. So, it’s also important, I submit, for us to wrestle with these questions, even if we’re not likely to come up with any answers. It’s in the wrestling that unexpected insights often spring to life. So, let me wrestle for a moment in front of you.
One of the first things that came to my mind as I grappled with this “not an iota” business is how it relates to our feelings about guilt and grace, and what they might have to do with our human quest for authenticity. You and I get easily hung up between our guilt about regularly dropping the iotas from the law week to week, and yet knowing that we live by Divine grace and forgiveness. Here’s what I think: the more authentic we become, the more honestly real and capable of intimacy with ourselves, with life, and with each other we become, the less personally defended we become, and the more free we are to recognize our faults without turning away in humiliation. But, the more authentic we become, also the more free we are to experience grace and forgiveness.
It occurs to me that, in this way, judgement and grace are really one and the same thing! Divine judgement is like a light that shines into our lives and our world. It’s a light that exposes everything in its truest and most honest form. It’s a light that says, “This is what is,” and leaves us to deal with the consequences of that truth. The very same light is the light of grace. It’s a light that shines into our lives and into our world, and says, “This is what is,” and leaves us with the realization that the deepest and most honest truth about ourselves and our lives — that we are children of grace, is also illuminated in that light of knowing.
All of this begins to make some sense when we realize that “the law” Jesus was talking about is the heart of Israel’s covenant with the Lord of Hosts. And a covenant is a far-reaching, holistic relationship based on love, the kind of love that means devotion and trust. You can’t do away with any part of such a relationship or it’s immediately violated. As soon as you begin asking which parts of the contract you can set aside, you have already violated the relationship. As soon as you ask which ones of the marriage vows you no longer need to consider, you’ve already violated love, and violated the marriage.
So what does all this have to do with us? Near as I can figure, it means we completely miss the boat if we’re still stuck trying to figure out what we have to do and not do to be a good Christian.
It’s like the story I heard somewhere told by a Rabbi who watched a guest at a major Chicago hotel rushing to pay his bill and check out. Suddenly the guest realized that he had left something in his room. Seeing an employee of the hotel, he asked, “Would you please hurry to room 1203, I think I left my briefcase there. Run up as fast as you can and see if it’s there; the airport limo leaves in six minutes.” Several minutes later the bellboy came back running across the lobby saying, “Yes sir, your briefcase is still there.”
See, if you have to explain that you’re only doing what you’re told, it’s obvious your heart’s not in it. And if your heart’s not in it, nothing else matters. I think that was Isaiah’s point. Going through the motions of worship and making an offering because it’s what we’ve been told to do can just be another way of putting blinders on to injustice, oppression, hunger, homelessness, and poverty.
Although we rarely admit it (even to ourselves), so many of us live in a way that seems to ask the question, “What can I get away with?” And the thing I keep choking on is, “Not an iota!”
I may never entirely sort all this out for myself, but I hope my reflections on this annoying little saying of Jesus have been at least mildly illuminating, and have not simply muddied the waters. At any rate, two things do seem to come into focus:
To live in covenant relationship with the Lord and in the community of faith, is to feel the joy and gratitude of the freedom that comes from dwelling in the gracious light of Holy Love, being loved as we are, and accepted even though we don’t deserve it.
And maybe we need to choke on a line like this a bit. Because maybe if we become comfortable throwing out the iotas, it won’t be long before we start expelling the ABC’s. Maybe it’s somehow good for us to wrestle with the body of scripture as we have it, inconsistencies, anachronisms, and all – every single iota.

August 17, 2025

Leaning Into a Miracle

I remember once a parishioner gave me a sermon. We were standing in the church office and he said to me, “I just had an epiphany! I figured out what the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand was. The miracle was the sharing. They only had a few loaves and fishes, and they all shared what little they had with each other. That’s the miracle!” I paused for a moment and then said, “That’ll preach.” I’ve thought about that comment several times since then. And it finally led me to think deeply into the true nature of miracles. I’d like to share some of my thoughts with you this morning.
What is a miracle anyway? I take issue with Webster’s New World Dictionary. It defines a miracle as “an event or action . . . thought to be due to supernatural causes.” Now I realize that such a definition jibes with most people’s idea of a miracle; what I have trouble getting behind is the word “supernatural.” I don’t think the word has any meaning. For something to be “supernatural” it would have to be outside the realm of “nature,” in other words, something that happens in a way that’s not the way things happen in this natural world. So you see my problem? I think miracles are part of the way things happen in this natural world. The fact that we often can’t get our minds around some things that happen doesn’t make them somehow “beyond nature,” it just makes them a little mind-blowing.
And if you want your mind to be blown, just consider the power of this moment recorded in the gospel of Matthew: five thousand people gathered in a large grassy area on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. They had traveled from all around, been there a long time, and it was late in the day. The disciples passed out a little food, and people did not stomp on each other trying to get to it. It is not recorded in the gospel that anyone was trampled, or beaten up, or accused of taking too much for himself. There’s as great a miracle as you can find. People sat together in this huge crowd and shared what they had and what they were given with each other. I imagine many people leaning to pass a basket of food to someone – leaning into a miracle.
That’s the posture for miracles, I’ve decided – leaning. There are a lot of reasons for leaning. And this morning I’d like to take some time to consider the many ways and times and occasions we might have to lean. One of them is like the experience of those who gathered in the lake shore with Jesus, leaning to reach across the gulf that separates one person from another to share a precious piece of bread. That kind of leaning goes against our nature. We’re hard wired by our DNA to get what we can for ourselves. It’s a question of survival. And with the future so unknowable, with tariffs, national debt, and the weak job market creating so much uncertainty, with the ever-present possibility of a devastating illness or catastrophic natural disaster, we all know the wisdom of the old adage: “you can never have too much.” And leaning toward another person to share what you have is miracle enough in my book.
People also lean toward one another to consult, to confer, to share ideas and to learn from others. You see it all the time at conferences, lectures, and meetings – people leaning together to share a thought. That may not sound very exceptional, but I would submit that on capitol hill today it might indeed constitute a miracle. America is built on the possibility that just such a miracle can happen day in and day out, that three separate branches of government, two separate houses of Congress, representatives of different political parties and different constituencies can, in fact, put aside narrow interests in service of the larger interests of the nation, and lean towards each other to govern. There has perhaps never been a time when such an assumption seemed more like banking on a miracle.
And sometimes our leaning is a very personal matter. It can have to do with simple decisions or with life issues. You’ve all heard someone say something like, “Well, right now I’m leaning toward not going.” And what decision we make in any moment can have a significant impact on our lives, or on those around us. Aristotle offered some good counsel as we consider which way to lean. He said, as I recall, “Temperance and courage are destroyed both by excess and deficiency and are kept alive by observance of the mean.” The term “mean” to Aristotle did not refer to some lukewarm, non-committal middle ground; it meant taking the right action at the right time. It is, indeed, left up to each one of us to know when it’s wise to press on despite the obstacles and when it’s better to stop beating your head against an impervious wall. Making such decisions cannot be boiled down to some formula, simple enough to write up in a self-help book. It requires of us that we draw upon every bit of knowledge, instinct, and intuition that we have at our disposal, along with some reliance on that invisible hand of grace, that indefinable virtue of maturity, and, admittedly, a little luck. And when we lean in the right direction, I consider it nothing short of a miracle.
People can lean also either away from or towards that which is unknown, unfamiliar, or frightening. Our world is filled today with people who are frightened by one another because they are different. It all grows out of the seed-bed of fear that is the instinctive human reaction to the “other.” But the prophet Isaiah spoke the Lord’s word to the ancient Israelites and advised them not to lean away from those strange people from distant lands, but lean toward them, and discover them leaning toward you as well. He put it this way, “See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you . . .” When humanity grows up sufficiently I truly believe we will put all of this fear, distrust, and hatred of one another behind us. We’ll learn to lean toward rather than away from our distant brothers and sisters. And to my way of thinking that will be quite the miracle.
Jacob found himself leaning as he walked away from a wrestling match with the Almighty. It’s a bizarre story recorded in this thirty-second chapter of the book of Genesis. Jacob lies down to sleep by the river Jabbok, and in the middle of the night starts wrestling with a divine being who gives him a new name, “Israel,” and who, in the process, strikes him on the hip and puts it out of joint. Jacob regards this encounter as a miracle and says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” But as he leaves his camp, he is leaning to one side, limping because of his injury. It’s only then that the greatest miracle happens. Jacob, perhaps because of the blessing he wrested from the Lord at the cost of a dislocated hip, summons the courage to come face to face with his brother, Essau – the same brother whom he cheated, and whose birthright he stole. Jacob fully expects that Essau will want to kill him, and he humbles himself, leans forward and bows. But upon seeing him, Essau runs to him, leans toward him, embraces and kisses him. And Jacob, who had come face to face with the Almighty the night before looks into his brother’s eyes and says with the conviction of one who knows, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”
Sometimes profound and life changing lessons are learned the hard way. Those painful lessons can leave us scarred or wounded. But they can also leave us blessed by courage and self-awareness. And that’s when the real miracles happen, when we find ourselves free to lean toward an estranged brother or to look deeply into the face of an opponent and see the face of God. In my book that’s miracle enough.
So, what’s a miracle? I think it’s when a human being discovers that he or she is more than a collection of needs and wants and survival instincts, but is, in fact, a child of hope, a child of promise. It’s when someone is so blessed and perhaps so injured by that discovery that they are freed to be more than they are; they are freed to share what they have, freed to listen and learn and to yield where necessary, and to persevere and struggle where necessary, freed to learn about and accept those who are very different and alien, freed to enter into reconciliation, to humble one’s self and to see the divine countenance where you might least expect it.
And freedom is indeed the byword for such miracles. Isaiah got it right. Leaning into miracles is not a rare exercise, it’s not exceptional or expensive. It’s simply what happens when we’re encountered by holiness in the midst of the routines of life and, by grace, respond. Such miracles are readily at hand, and freely available.
Isaiah entreated us to “incline our ears” and hear – to lean toward him so we would not miss his word. Here’s the clarion cry that rings down through the centuries to rattle us out of our well-ordered, self-absorbed lives, our familiar fears, and our dependable prejudices: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Those are words you can lean on. And by my way of thinking, that’s a miracle.

August 10, 2025

Why Are We Here?

I thought it might be a good time in the life of our church to ask a simple question: Why are we here?
What is this building here for? What are these people doing here? If we are excited about making it possible for us to continue to be the church into the rest of the twenty-first century, what does it mean to be the church in this twenty-first century?
I have some rather straight-forward answers to those questions this morning. First, I believe we here because we are a community of transcendent faith. We have come here and stay here together because we are people of faith, and we work to further the depth and reach of that faith.
Now, if you listen to a lot of the preachers, read a lot of the tracts, and analyze a good share of the theology from the Christian Church in the last century or more, you might be left to draw the mistaken conclusion that faith means believing in things that don’t make sense because you’re supposed to. That’s just the sort of thing that has turned a lot of people off from Christianity. It almost did for me.
I reached a point (somewhere in my late teens or early twenties) of thinking that all the stories I’d heard about things that happened in “Bible times” were a lot of hooey. Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, the parting of the Red Sea, the immaculate conception, walking on water, the whole nine yards. None of these were events that connected with my every-day experience of life. I read the stories in the Bible, and I said to myself, “Self, if all those things were going on for all those thousands of years way back then, how come they’re not going on today?” I was forced to conclude that it was probably all made up, didn’t really happen, just some fancy embellishments on what might have happened if it had happened they way some folks wanted it to – kind of like Santa Claus.
I figured out Santa Claus by the time I was seven. It would be nice to believe in Santa, but the Miracle on 34th Street is, after all, just a movie. And the stories about people being miraculously raised from the dead, and seeing burning bushes and hearing God talk to them were, after all, out of a book. Consequently, I figured, faith is a crock!
I was confused by thinking that faith meant believing things that don’t make sense because you’re supposed to. And I wonder, how many people have been cheated out of a certain power in their lives by rejecting faith because they equated it with such silly and juvenile notions.
If faith were just a matter of believing things are real that you can’t see, or that don’t add up, it would be like the observation of the man who was told by his doctor that his ailment was purely psychosomatic. It was “all in his head,” the doctor said. He replied, “Now, let me get this straight, doc. If I believe I’m well, then I’ll be well, right?” “That’s right,” said the doctor. “Fine, then,” he said, “if you believe you’re paid, then you’ll be paid!”
The faithful life is so much more.
Every time I remember, or again encounter, the story of Ann Frank, of all the fear and suffering she endured as a young Jewish girl hiding out with her family from the Nazis – a story told in a tattered diary that ends with tragic silence – I’m reminded of the graffiti written by a young Jew on the wall of a Warsaw ghetto:
“I believe in the sun,
even if it does not shine.
I believe in love,
even when I do not feel it.
I believe in God,
even when I don’t see him.”

Faith does not mean believing in things that don’t make sense because you’re supposed to. Faith means believing in the only things that finally do make sense in a senseless world! Faith means living into the truth of Christ, and drawing deeply from the well of life, regardless of the cost. It means trusting love in scorn of the consequences. It means clinging to joy in the very face of despair. I believe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
And that child, that young girl, Ann Frank, lived out her days in a hiding place of terror, abundantly! Sometimes I truly believe that if the lion and the lamb ever develop the courage and good sense to lie down together, it will indeed be a little child that leads them.
That’s another reason we’re here: to lift up the value of children; in fact, to be like them. Children somehow seem to have an innate confidence in life. They’re born in 5th gear, with the windows down, and a grin on their face. But the cold slaps of reality on the behind quickly teach children to let go of their instinctive faith in life.
In his book on faith development, John Westerhoff talks about an “owned faith” – a faith that is truly yours, not your parents, or your preachers. He tells us that the principle task of developing such a faith is the gradual process of unlearning all of the things that taught you to give up the faith of your infancy. Maybe that’s part of what Jesus meant when he said, “unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Children are born open, accepting, and trusting. They have to be taught to be racists.
Children are born curious and searching. They have to learn how to close their minds.
Children are born with faith as their primary existential attitude. They have to acquire anxiety, fear, and defensiveness.
To become like a child, and therefore a candidate for the kingdom of heaven, is simply to unlearn one’s prejudice, closed-mindedness, and defensiveness. It is not to do away with doubt, it is not to subscribe to a catalogue of beliefs, it is not even to use all the right religious-sounding words.
To become like a child is to run up the window-shade on existence, and approach life with expectant confidence. And to create a place where people can learn and grow and experiment in order to finally do just that, is a wondrous thing, and that is what we are here for!
We are also here to, as Jesus said, “love one another.” But love is really simply another form of faith. Young people frequently confuse love with lust and therefore become jaded when they learn that it doesn’t last. Folks who have been married long enough to ride out some of the major relational storms didn’t bat an eye, I’m sure, when I said that love is simply another form of faith. True love between marriage partners is an attitude about life in relationship, the way faith is an attitude about life in the world. It’s a constant returning, a dependable trusting, and a dauntless caring. Love in any form is like that.
And we learn about it also from children. We should all be moved to tears by the faithful love of the child who relentlessly interrupts, pleads, demands over and over, “Mommy,” “Daddy” because they have a word to share. And even when ignored. Even when given the “I don’t see you. You’re invisible because you’re interrupting” treatment, they keep it up. They will not be turned away. They will not be denied a relationship with you. They will not give up on you! We can learn a lot from them.
And the kind of love that exists between friends can be like a healing balm to calm a troubled spirit. But that also is a form of faith, because every friend you can ever have will someday disappoint you. Every person you trust will in some way’s let you down. Every relationship you cherish will in some ways never be quite enough. Love is that friendship that does not fail when the friend does. People learn about such love in this place.
There is also a love that stretches beyond the close circle of family and friendship – love translated into institutions, programs, structures. Another name for this kind of love is justice. We are not here, as Isaiah pointed out, to “trample the courts” of the Lord with “offerings . . . solemn assemblies . . . appointed festivals [and] . . . prayers.” We are here to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Those who love this church, and who have loved it over many years and through many pastorates, have demonstrated love by their tenacious confidence in one another, their dependable commitment to ministry and mission in the name of Christ, their unyielding gentleness in the face of adversity, and their dependable presence through storms and struggles, trials and traumas. Such love is, in some ways, its own reward. It nurtures the flowering of something within the heart that is very durable and very beautiful.
To create an environment in which such profoundly meaningful ways of loving can blossom and grow is very worth doing, and that is why we’re here!
In short, we are hear to learn. We are here to learn about faith and love. And it is that joyous learning that gives us hope. These are the things that abide.
Is faith “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” as the author of this letter to the Hebrews claims? In a manner of speaking, yes. But not as we often think. Faith is not about disgruntled belief, begrudging acquiescence, or closed-minded compliance. It is indeed about that for which we hope, about believing in something worth believing in, about nurturing the confidence to boldly pursue that which is “not seen.”
“By faith,” the writer of Hebrews continues, “Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise.” By faith, you and I are called to go out into the world to proclaim the inheritance of Divine Love. By faith, we sojourn in the glorious land of promise.
And that is why we are here!