THE GOLDEN RULE OF JESUS

Matthew 7:12-21

a sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

August 29, 2010 (Sermon on the Mount series, #8)

“Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” – Matthew 7:12

(Treat others as you would like to be treated.)

When I was in elementary school in the small town of Aberdeen, NC, I remember that at the beginning of the school year, we were all handed wooden rulers with the Golden Rule written across that 12 inch ruler:  Do unto others as you would have them do to you.  Some memories stick with us, and that Golden Rule Ruler is one of them for me.  If all of us could learn to live by the Golden Rule, I suspect that we’d experience the harmony and peace that God intends.

One of our adult classes is now studying Diana Butler Bass’ book, A People’s History of Christianity.  She looks at Christian history and asks how Christian faith through the centuries has been practiced as devotion (prayer) and in acts of social justice.  Her thesis is that the sweep of Christian history is the story of believers seeking to live the Great Command:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.  If we picked the core value of Jesus, this is it.   This is the practical expression of Jesus’ call for the Kingdom of God—love for God and love for neighbor.

The Golden Rule grows out of this core value of Jesus.  With the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount reaches its summit.  One writer called the Golden Rule “the peak of social ethics and the Everest of all ethical teaching.”  (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew). 

The Golden Rule is a rule of generosity, and it emerges directly from the character of God.  Someone asked me recently, “How in the world can you believe all the contradictory stuff in the Bible?  It’s so confusing.”  I responded, “Yes, people have used the Bible to justify violence, slavery, and the oppression of women and gays.”   But once you strip away all the contradictions and unseemly violence and injustice in the Bible, we can get to what’s really important—the Bible’s central message, which is the character of God.  It is stated throughout the Hebrew Bible:  “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” (Ex. 34:6-7; Hosea 2:19-21; Psalm 33:45; Psalm 145:8-9)  That’s the key!  We interpret the Bible through the lens of the character of God.

Why is this so important?  Last Sunday we listened to our young people in worship tell us what they learned in their summer missions, and we could hear them speak honestly about their struggles with their young faith.  Can they trust God to give them what they need, or will they keep asserting their own willfulness?  Will they see God at work in the lives of the poor?  Can they see the love of God calling all of us to be sisters and brothers, across the lines of culture, race, language, and class?  Their answer was a very clear Yes!  And their affirmation comes straight from the Golden Rule, which is based directly on Jesus command:  Love your neighbor, which comes directly from the character of God—gracious, merciful, abounding in steadfast love.

Jesus came to embody and express the character of God.  As Christians, our job is to follow Jesus, and that means we are to embody and express the character of God. That means we do what Jesus did; we take the initiative; we take the first step in doing what is right and good. We do not wait until the hungry person asks for food.  We don’t wait for our enemy to attack; we work for the enemy’s well-being first.  (from Gene L. Davenport, Into the Darkness:  Discipleship in the Sermon on the Mount)

But so often we are reactive people.  Someone says or does something offensive, and we react—out of fear or revenge.   The controversy over the proposed mosque near the site of the Twin Towers in New York is a case in point.  Our nation was founded on freedom of religion; yet out of fear or revenge, some want to block the building of the mosque.  It’s a reactive position.  With the Golden Rule, Jesus is trying to teach us to stop being reactive and start being proactive.  Treat others the way you want to be treated.  Take a positive initiative before any negative reaction starts building—because when we are reactive and negative, we forget the Golden Rule:  Treat your Muslim neighbor the way you want to be treated.

The real issue of the Golden Rule is whether our authority is our own ego or Jesus.  We say at baptism “Jesus is Lord,” but we need to be consistent and keep re-affirming Jesus as Lord—rather than our ego or our fear or our desire for revenge.

Who is our authority?  The difficulty is that we tend to be suspicious of all authorities.  We’ve all seen the bumper sticker, “Question authority.”  In college we’re taught to do critical thinking, to question assumptions, to doubt authority.  So, on our worst days, we begin to doubt Jesus’ authority.

Here is the point about authority. We may claim Jesus as our authority, and then let him remain a rather distant, external authority.  But faith tells us and our spiritual training tells us to allow Jesus’ authority to seep into our pores until it becomes our inner authority.

The Golden Rule of Jesus is the moral basis for how we are to treat all people.  But we first must overcome our distance, and begin to relate in direct ways to people who may be different from us.  We have to come out of our private space and meet each other at the level of our common humanity.  Our young people told us about their reaching out to the youth from our sister church in El Salvador. They became friends—even though in their pick-up soccer match, the El Salvador youth beat us rather soundly.  But as the Good Book says, there are times when we win by losing.  We increase by decreasing.

In 1963 President Kennedy appealed to the Golden Rule in an anti-segregation speech at the time when the first black students were enrolled at the University of Alabama. He asked whites to consider, “What would it be like for you to be treated as second-class citizens because of skin color?”  He asked whites to imagine being black.  He asked us to empathize – to be told that we couldn't vote, or go to the best public schools, or eat at most public restaurants, or sit in the front of the bus. Would we white people be content to be treated that way? President Kennedy was sure that we wouldn't -- and yet this is how whites were treating their sisters and brothers who were black.  Kennedy said the “heart of the question is ... whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”  The same applies today to Latinos, women, gays, and other minorities.

Like Abraham Lincoln, President Kennedy was appealing to the better angels of our nature.  Where is compassion, where is empathy, where is the deeper connection with all people, regardless of race, class, ethnic origin, or any other distinction?

You can see from the cover of our worship bulletin that that Golden Rule is found in every major religion in the world. In most of the religions, it’s stated in a negative form:  Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.”  But Jesus says it positively, in essence saying, “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” 

At the United Nations in New York, there is a painting (actually a mosaic of a painting) that was presented by Mrs. Nancy Reagan on behalf of the United States on the 40^th anniversary of the UN.  It’s a painting by the American artist Norman Rockwell, and it’s called the Golden Rule. Rockwell wanted to illustrate how the Golden Rule was a common theme of all the major religions of the world, and he depicted people of every race, creed and color with dignity and respect. The mosaic contains the inscription "Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do unto You.”  It is stunning because it takes up the whole wall.  (I tried hard to find a print, but I did come up with a small copy which you might want to see after the service.)

At the UN the Golden Rule mosaic takes up a whole wall.  But does the Golden Rule take up our whole heart?  This issue goes to the depth of our faith.  Has our faith taken root in our heart, or is it still superficial?  Do we pull out the Golden Rule only when it suits our whim?  The issue for all of us is whether we have united our character with God’s character, our heart with God’s heart, so that love of God and neighbor is the goal of our life.  That’s why the question of authority is such a big one.  Is our ego Lord, or is Jesus Lord?

It’s really a matter of obedience, isn’t it?  And we’re uncomfortable with that word “obedience.”  We resist being obedient—to parents, teachers, or our supervisor at work?  We have trouble being obedient.   But faith is a matter of obedience.

Listen to the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta:  “Pray for me that I not loosen my grip on the hands of Jesus even under the guise of ministering to the poor.”  That is our first task:  to grip the hands of Jesus with such tenacity that we are obliged to follow his lead, to seek first his kingdom. The next step is so simple we are almost embarrassed to mention it, and yet it is so important. Begin now to obey Jesus in every way you can.”  (from Richard Foster, Freedom of Simplicity)

To obey Jesus is not a form of slavery.  It’s the road to true freedom.  The word “obedience” is not a harsh, taskmaster word.  It comes from Latin “ob audiens,” meaning to thoroughly listen. (from David Steindl-Rast, A Listening Heart, p. 47) If we are obedient to Jesus, our first task is to LISTEN—listen until his words sink into our pores and into our heart.

When that happens, I think we will find ourselves being kinder, friendlier, more compassionate, more willing to listen to the needs of others.  I was in a meeting recently when a person said, “Never underestimate that power of kindness.”  When all our interactions are filled with kindness and gentleness, the other person will sense that kindness, that gentleness; and they will gradually respond with kindness. 

But if the other person continues to be a grouch, we will continue to be kind toward them, and someday the Grouch or the Scrooge in them will diminish, and a kind person will emerge.  Treat others the way you’d like to be treated.  And likewise, let’s hope that we learn to treat other nations the way we want to be treated.  That’s why I think the Peace Corps is one of the finest programs our country has created.  Likewise citizen diplomacy and El Salvador mission teams provide the friendship force that may be the clearest way to peace.  In other words, what miracles might happen if we simply lived Jesus’ Golden Rule?

I close with a prayer from the third century:

May I gain no victory that harms me or my opponent.
May I reconcile friends who are mad at each other.
May I, insofar as I can, give all necessary
help to my friends and to all who are in need.
May I never fail a friend in trouble.  (attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea)

Amen.  So may it be.

A THEOLOGY OF ASKING

Matthew 7:7-14

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

August 15, 2010 (Sermon on the Mount series, No. 7)

Ask and it will be given to you.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened to you.

The title of this sermon is “A Theology of Asking.”  You may think that I’m going to ask you for money.  I didn’t really want to go in this direction; but our financial realities compel me to digress briefly.

I was in a meeting this week about the new East Durham Children’s Initiative, and the speaker said “We’ll need all the resources we can find to provide a continuous pipeline of education for the low income children of East Durham.”  Then the speaker asked:  “Is there someone here who could write a check for $20,000?”  The room was quiet.  Howard Clement, our good friend on the City Council, raised his hand, and everybody chuckled.  But the speaker said, “Don’t write the check yet, but we’ll need generous givers.  This work will need all of us.”  The same sentiment applies to God’s work through this church.

I have a minister friend who has an ingenious way of asking for money during his benediction at the close of their service.   The typical benediction is “Go in peace, and sin no more.”  But he says, with a slight smile:  “Go in peace, and send more.”  In our church we are now $54,000 below our offerings at this time last year.  So— maybe I should borrow his benediction. Go and send more.  Send whatever you can.   I am digressing, slightly, on this subject of Asking.  But now I’m ready to start the sermon. 

The text for today gives us an expansive invitation to ask for whatever we need.  The Book of James says, “Ask not, receive not.”  (James 2:4)  In our text today Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given.  Seek and you’ll find.  Knock and the door will be opened.”

Years ago I went to visit a family.  They were in crisis.  The husband was in the hospital, and there were two small children.  The wife was under enormous pressure going back and forth to the hospital, plus getting the children to school and then to after-school care with neighbors and friends.  She was emotionally depleted, frustrated, and near the breaking point.  I asked if she could use some help from the church. Finally, she lifted her head and said, “It’s hard for me to ask.  I guess I need a theology of asking.”

Why is it that we have a hard time asking for what we need?  I’m guessing that we have a feeling that we should be totally self-sufficient and never need anything from anybody else. So we learn not to ask for help—or for money.  We’ve bought into a Lone Ranger mentality.  Go take care of it yourself.  Whatever the task before us, we convince ourselves that we should never ask someone else for help.  Asking for help feels like a sign of weakness.   “Do it yourself” becomes our motto; but that motto is not only un-Baptist and un-Christian, it’s also un-healthy.

Sometimes we’re reluctant to ask for medical help for our bodily ailments.  We may be feeling puny, our neck hurts, back hurts, stomach hurts, and we put off asking for help.  “Maybe it will go away.”  We men may be especially susceptible to this attitude.  We’ve also heard, “If I don’t go to the doctor, they won’t find anything wrong.”  Finally, someone pushes us to go ask for medical help.

The same situation can also occur with our internal emotional struggles or our relationships with partner or spouse.  We all face bumps in the road, tensions, conflict.   And we have trouble asking for help and health.  So Jesus words are timely:  We need to learn to ask.

Asking for help is a sign of strength and health.  We are not Lone Ranger individuals living an isolated life.  We are part of a community in Durham where there is wonderful medical help and counseling help—and we are part of this church filled with caring, compassionate, generous people.  So why do we have trouble asking?  Can we encourage each other to ask for help, to ask for what we need?

Based on our text for today, I wonder if our reluctance about asking is related to our reluctance to pray.  Are we willing to ask God for what we need?  Or do we say, “Well, God is too busy—like everybody else—so I’ll take care of it myself.”  But Jesus is teaching us to pray—to ask God for what we need.  Do we need discernment about our vocational direction?  Do we need to ask for courage in the face of a medical diagnosis?  Do we need to ask for help with a relationship or with aching grief over some loss?

Jesus is giving us a policy about prayer.  He’s telling us:  Ask and keep asking.  But what do we ask for?  Do we ask God to find us a parking place, a job, a new place to live?  Is Jesus saying that if we pray hard enough, we can get anything we want?  Is Jesus saying that God is a kind of Santa Claus in the sky who always brings good little boys and girls what they ask for?  No.  As Clarence Jordan says, God is not “a Heavenly Vending Machine that is set in motion by a ten-cent prayer.”  (from Clarence Jordan, The Sermon on the Mount, p. 109) 

Jesus is saying that God is trustworthy to give us what we need.  What we need is trust in the grace and goodness that God provides.  Jesus is telling us that God is like a parent who when the child asks for bread, the parent will not give the child a stone.  When the child asks for a fish, the parent will not give a serpent.  Then Luke adds a third example:  If the child asks for an egg, the parent will not give a scorpion.  In other words, a parent will not mock their own child by giving some absurd substitute.

Therefore, God, our heavenly Parent, will never refuse our prayers; God will not mock our prayers.  (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, volume 1, p. 271)  God will answer our prayers—in God’s own way.  That means that God will answer our prayers with love and wisdom.  The point of praying is that we will be united with God; we will persevere in prayer long enough to connect with God’s energy.  When we pray, really pray, it’s like connecting with an enormous reservoir of goodness and grace.   I sometimes think that we settle for a trickle of God’s energy when we have the possibility of drinking from the vast reservoir.

By feasting from that reservoir, we find the nurture that we need for clear thinking, good judgment, and decision -making about all the issues we face.  We may be flippant when we say we’re praying for cooler weather or a better parking place or a fishing spot where the fish are biting.  But the central reality we pray for is God—that we will be united with God and God’s energy, God’s love, God’s delight.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has long been one of my mentors.  Near the end of his life, he was recovering from a heart attack.  He told a friend, “When I regained consciousness, my first feelings were not of despair or anger.  I felt only gratitude to God for my life, for every moment I had lived…I have seen so many miracles in my lifetime.”  Then he paused and said, “This is what I meant when I wrote:  ‘I did not ask for success.  I asked for wonder.  And You gave it to me.”

Rabbi Heschel developed a theology of asking; he asked for wonder—heightened awareness.  He called it “radical amazement”—gratitude for the ordinary miracles all around him—the breeze, the sunset, the butterfly on the flower, the friend nearby.   Another person voiced a similar prayer by asking, “May I experience the joy of life in your presence.”  (William Shannon, Silence on Fire:  The Prayer of Awareness)

We come to church because here we find a supportive community. We join other people who are also asking to “experience the joy of life in God’s presence.”  When we all have that intention, we are part of a praying community—all of us seeking to open ourselves to God’s energy, that vast reservoir of love and patience and trust and peace.  We may not get the weather we asked for—or the parking place—or the fishing spot.  But we will gain much more, a deepened sense of communion with the Source of our life.

What then do we do with our anxieties and fears, our worries about the state of the world—the violence, the wars, the poverty, the pain?   The old song says, “Take it to the Lord in prayer.”  We name the fear, name the anxiety, name the pain, and we release it.  We ask!  We ask for God’s presence to keep expanding and deepening within us and around us.

We ask to sink deeper into God’s grace and goodness.  “Sinking into God” is a term Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, gave us.

Not too long ago a friend gave me another image for our asking.  He said, “I imagine that I’m a water lily, rooted and grounded beneath the water, in the mud of the earth.  On the surface of the water, there are various ripples and waves.  Storms may churn, and the water may be choppy.  But the lily stays unshaken. Why?  Because we are rooted and grounded; we have asked to keep firmly connected to our roots, to find our life beneath all surface events.  We are not defined by the surface events.  We are defined by sinking into God, being rooted in God.

What do I ask for?  I ask to sink into God, to stay rooted in God.  And from that place of communion, I ask for peace.  I ask for wonder—to be awake, aware, mindful of the healing miracles all around us.   I’m saying that we first turn to God in silent communion.  Silence is the source of action.  Over time, out of the Silence, our actions will grow.   And the effectiveness of our actions is directly related to the quality of our silence, our communion with God.  But first we learn to ask God:  Let your Spirit breathe through me and flow through me.

We need a theology of asking.  When our faith community—this church—provides us encouragement and support and challenge to keep going deeper into God, then we find our energies released. We find ourselves nudged, prompted, called to do God’s work—to carry the Light out of here into the places of human need. 

When we see the goodness of God’s work through this church’s ministry and missions, then I believe we will give the money to support it, to keep it thriving.  When we learn to ask God, we can also learn to ask each other—for whatever help we may need, including the financial support to keep this church’s ministry strong and vital. 

That action is a spiritual practice that emerges from our gratitude for the vast reservoir of love and faith we’ve been given.

Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened.

So may it be.  Amen.

JUDGE NOT

Matthew 7:1-5

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

August 8, 2010 (Sermon on Mount series, #6)

Judge not, that you be not judged. – Matthew 7:1

At first this statement sounds like “Let’s do away with law courts.”  But Jesus is speaking about private judging.  He’s talking about our tendency to judge others.  So let’s face it at the outset!  We can be judgmental people.  We like someone; we dislike someone else.  We can be affirming of one person and critical of another.  When someone has said a harsh word to us or done some unseemly deed, we can form a judgmental attitude toward them—and hold on to that judgment for a long time.

Jesus understood our human tendencies, and that must be the reason he said “Judge not, lest you be judged.”  Jesus is giving us another hard saying, another command:  Stop judging other people.  Ouch!

Jesus has an enormous appeal to us; we are drawn to him.  At our baptism, we’ve all said “Jesus is Lord.”  We’ve pledged to do all we can to live up to his teachings through our attitude and actions.  If Jesus is Lord, and we are faithful to him, we will follow his words and stop judging other people.

But how can we do it?  It seems impossible. I heard a priest recently tell of going to a prayer retreat at a quiet retreat center.  He said that he saw a woman there leafing through Hollywood magazines—seeing all the glamour and glitz of the stars, at a prayer retreat! He thought to himself, “How terrible!  She is disrespecting this opportunity for prayer.”  A little later he came back, and now the woman was cutting out pictures of those glitzy Hollywood stars.  Again he thought, “How awful.”   With his judgmental attitude, he came a little closer and saw that the woman was placing the pictures on a large piece of cardboard—making a collage.  In the center of the board, she placed a picture of the Madonna and Child; it was lovely.  Then she taped the pictures of the Hollywood stars around the center picture of the Christ child.

He said, “I was judging her—and I really wanted to kick her out of the prayer retreat.”  Then he saw that she was making a prayer collage, with the Christ child at the center of the Hollywood stars. (from Fr. Robert Hale)

Sometimes we judge too hastily.  Sometimes we form opinions based on limited perspective and partial information. Our judging can then become a form of prejudice—pre-judging.  Our tendency to be judgmental can then become the basis for all kinds of prejudice—about someone’s race, age, class, sexual orientation, or national origin.  We now have a big debate in this country about immigration.  How much of the judgmental attitude toward the immigrant is based on our tendency to judge harshly someone who is different from us?

We have to be careful about judging other persons.  The risk is self-righteousness, pride, arrogance—and then the danger is that we do not see our own sin---our anger, our haughtiness, our mean-spiritedness.  So often the institutional church has failed to practice Jesus’ words “Judge not.”  This week we’ve read about the novelist Anne Rice saying she is giving up on organized religion.  She said, “I remain committed to Christ, but…not to being a part of Christianity.  It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious group.  I’ve tried.” 

She refers to the church’s tendency to be judgmental—to be anti feminist, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-life.  She said that Christ did not fail her, but Christianity—the institutional church—did.  (from Leonard Pitts, “Keeping Faith, Losing Religion,” Durham Herald Sun, August 7, 2010)  I submit that much of the institutional church’s failure has come in refusing to follow Jesus’ words “Judge not.”

That’s why Jesus says, “Take the log out of your own eye before you look for the speck, the mote, in your brother’s eye.”  (Matt.7:4)  Look at the cartoon humor here.  Someone called this the “Parable of the Splinter and the Plank. (Moffatt)  We can’t see the splinter in someone else’s eye because we’ve got a plank in our own eye.  Jesus is using humor to say that no one is good enough to judge another person.  We have faults enough of our own.  How can we criticize someone else when we’ve got our own sins?  Jesus is saying that when we criticize someone else, we can be blind to our own faults—with terribly low awareness about our own shortcomings.

There is a story from the early desert fathers and mothers.  These were Christians who in the 3^rd and 4^th century fled the cities, civilization, see it as a shipwreck from which they must flee.   So they headed to the desert—to be silent and pray.  These monks lived in caves or on mountainsides, with solitude helping them come to terms with their true self, to find the poverty of spirit that helped them rely totally on God.  

In this story a brother committed some fault.  A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it.  Then they sent someone to say to him, “Come, for everyone is waiting for you at the judgment council.”  So he got up and went.  He took a leaking jug, filled it with water, and carried it with him on his back.  The others came out to meet him and said to him, “What is this, Father?”  The old man said to them, “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the error of another.”  When they heard that, they said no more to the brother, but forgave him.”  (from James Hanay, The Wisdom of the Desert, quoted in Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 37)

This is one of the reasons Jesus says, “Judge not.”  None of us is good enough, righteous enough, to judge another person.  We also can never know fully what’s going on in the life of the person we may be judging.  We recall the old motto, “Be kind to every one you meet, for you never know what burdens they are carrying.”  The Native American saying was, “Don’t criticize someone until you’ve walked a mile in their moccasins.”

And there is also the difficulty of our inability to be totally objective.  We always see through the filter of our own experience—which means we could be wrong about the other person.  We could be wrong if we say So-and-So is selfish.  So-and-So is greedy.  So-and-So is a liar.

The earliest Christians were enormously forgiving in relation to anyone who may have done some unseemly deed.  One of the desert Christians said, “I rise up and I fall down, I rise up and I fall down.”  But with respect to others, they said, “Don’t judge anybody.  Period.  Even if you see them doing something wrong with your own eyes!  Appearances can be deceiving.  You may be wrong.  Don’t judge.”  As a result, the weaker brothers or sisters quickly became what others expected them to be—loving, forgiving, compassionate.  Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 37)

Are we getting a little closer to the reason Jesus said:  Stop judging others?  Jesus’ central mission was compassion.  Reynolds Price, professor of English at Duke, is not a churchgoer; but he has studied Jesus’ life and teachings, and he says the one quality that Jesus showed over and over is compassion.  Jesus was often moving toward those who are weak, vulnerable, and broken. He knew that compassion was impossible when we are judging and criticizing.

Henri Nouwen says that “Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates distance…which prevents us from really being with the other person.”  (Nouwen, TheWay of the Heart, p. 35)

So often our life and ministry is crowded with judgments.  Perhaps even unconsciously we classify people. This person is very good or good, bad, or very bad.  Once we make our judgments, then comes the self-fulfilling prophecy.  When we consider a person lazy or indifferent or hostile or obnoxious, we start treating them this way, and they live up to our view.  When we put these limits on others, then our compassion shrivels.  (from Nouwen)

Compassion is the result of solitude, time to deepen our life of prayer and to discover our true self.  Gordon Cosby is founder of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC.  He’s now in his 90’s.  I’ve heard him say in his sermons, “I’ve stopped judging other people.  Instead, I want to turn my energies to deepening my own life of prayer.”

When we deepen our prayer life, a change happens within us.  Our attitude toward others, changes.  Judging stops.  We become more accepting, more forgiving.  Others notice, and that forgiving spirit becomes contagious.  The community around us becomes charged with a new vitality.

Rather than judgment, forgiveness, love, and compassion grow—like flowers in a desert.

So may it be.  Amen.

DO NOT BE ANXIOUS

Matthew 6:25-33

A homily by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

August 1, 2010  (Sermon on the Mount series, # 5)

It seems quite clear that Jesus is giving us not a suggestion, but a command:  “Do not be anxious.”  But how in the world can any of us fulfill this command?  To say “Don’t be anxious” is like saying “Don’t think of a green monkey.”  It seems impossible.  It’s like telling someone with a bad cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much—or telling someone with a lame leg to stop limping.  It seems impossible.  (from Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark) 

Anxiety is the human condition.  I don’t think it’s possible to get rid of it.  All of us are anxious at one time or another.  What then can Jesus mean when he says, “Don’t be anxious”?  Most sermons, you know, are preached by the preacher to the preacher.  Folks in the congregation are invited to “overhear.”  

Anxiety is an old friend of mine.  I’ve known anxiety all my life, especially at the transition points. When I left the security of my rural childhood surroundings, I went to first grade.  I was excited—and anxious.  When my family moved to another town when I was 7, I was anxious.  When I entered high school, I was anxious.  When I graduated from high school and went to college, I was anxious.  When I went to divinity school, I was anxious.  When I took my first church, I was anxious.  When I came as pastor at Watts Street, I was anxious.  Now I’ve completed 22 years here, and every Sunday I’m still a little anxious.

Anxiety is the human condition; it’s standard equipment on every model.  Anxiety is like an alarm system—a signal that you are in danger of losing something or being separated from something or someone you love. But we have a tendency to substitute a lesser object to keep from facing the real thing we’re about to lose.  So instead of talking about the real loss, we say we’re about to lose something like food or money or clothing—or someone’s approval. 

We can get anxious about the wrong things. I think Jesus is saying to us:  Don’t be anxious in this way.  Don’t turn to lesser concerns.  Stop fretting over the wrong things—the label on your clothes or whether the house is clean or the kitchen garbage can has been emptied.  The point of Jesus’ Gospel is:  You can be saved from this.  We can turn from this pointless, compulsive anxiousness. (from Carlyle Marney, “The Word Against Anxiousness,” a sermon)

In early American revival meetings, there was a seat down near the pulpit.  It was called the “anxious seat.”  The anxious seat was a bench set aside for any person who was troubled, perplexed, worried, and in need of salvation.  Now today, if I asked how many of you are anxious, we’d probably need more than one anxious bench to seat all of us.  We’re all anxious, and we all need to be saved from this anxiety.

Often our anxiety has to do with our uncertainties, an unknown future.  What if?  What if I don’t slow down the rat-race pace I keep?  Or ... what if I don’t hurry up and get myself into high gear?  One person said he had two major anxieties.  One was that if he didn’t slow down, he could have a heart attack.  The other was that if he didn’t hurry up, he would not be able to accomplish enough before he had his heart attack. 

Our list of “what ifs” is endless.  What if someone we love dies?  What if my partner leaves me?  What if I can’t manage being a parent and working?  What if I don’t find another job?  What if the pain I have is cancer?  What if I’m not living out my faith the way I could?  Do you see what happens with this pile of anxiety?  It’s like being covered with blankets, one after another, until you have trouble breathing.  And that’s literally what anxiety is.  The word “anxiety” comes from Latin “angustia” which means “shortness of breath.” The Germans call it “angst.”

We can be saved from all this anxiety.  How?  Psychologist and life coaches will tell us to do relaxation breathing.  Calm your agitated state.  Take a course on Mindfulness Training” or yoga.  You might use imagery—think of a calm, quiet place—a lake, a meadow, your back porch.  Theologians and pastors would send us to the wisdom of the Bible.  Why is it that at the time of death or illness or crisis, we think of the Twenty-third Psalm?  “The Lord is my shepherd.  He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters.  Or let’s re-phrase it, from Brother James’ Air.

          The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want (be anxious)

          He makes me down to lie

          In pastures green; he leadeth me

          The quiet waters by.

That tune will knock down any anxiety demon.  These words have stood the test of time; they’ve alleviated more anxieties than we can name.  Why?  God is in the words.  God is in the tune.  The result is that we can breathe—deeply, fully.  The shortness of breath is calmed.

Isn’t that what prayer does?  At the monastery last week at the daily Eucharist, as we prepare to receive the bread and cup, there is a line of the prayer that jolts me every time I hear it:  “Free us from anxiety.”  When we pray, we surrender our anxieties to God.  We replace anxiety with trust.  As W.H. Auden said it:  “We depart from our anxiety into God’s peace.”

We can stop being anxious about unimportant things; we can start by caring about what really matters—God and God’s Beloved Community (the Kingdom).  When we place our trust and confidence in God, and God’s Kingdom, then we can breathe freely.  The focus of our prayer is God; we place our trust not in our own anxious striving, but in God’s love and grace.

When we do this, we gain perspective on our life.  Perspective:  It’s like … being a tuba player in a symphony orchestra.  Did you hear the story of the tuba player who got a night off because he had a tooth pulled?  He decided to come to the concert and sit in the audience for a change.  He took his seat in the front row of the balcony where he could see and hear everything.  He was thrilled with what he heard.  Afterward, he ran backstage to his comrades and shouted, “You know what?  The symphony doesn’t go ‘oompah, oompah, oompah’ at all!”  For the first time, he had stopped hearing his own little oompah part, and he heard the full symphony.

Jesus says, “Do not be anxious.  Don’t fret about your own anxieties.”  Seek first the Kingdom, the big picture, the full symphony.  You’re not the only player in the symphony. 

Our goal is to make a commitment to God and God’s Beloved Community.  Then God will provide what we need—and much more.

Amen.

Watts Street Baptist Church

July 25, 2010

17^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sam R. Miglarese

A word of personal thanks for the invitation—enormous privilege.

A word of admiration for this congregation and its Pastor: your compassionate heart and active involvement in the community.  Thank you.

The Preached Word—A word to the wise or what is it you really want; 1 King 3: 5-12 and Luke 11: 1-13

This past April I facilitated a retreat for the men of First Presbyterian at the Avila retreat center.  We have monthly breakfast meetings but we wanted to step aside and set apart time together in retreat.  We asked Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove from Walltown to lead us. After introductions, he shared stories of Jacob and in light of those great stories of faith asked us “What do we want?”  That question unsettles and evokes answers about our deepest concerns.  It is not surprising then that the first words on the lips of Jesus in John’s Gospel are the same.  John the Baptist points out Jesus as the Lamb of God and two of his disciples go to follow him and Jesus sees them and turns to them and asks, “What are you looking for? What do you want?”  He invites them as he invites us to “come and see.”

It is within this context that the famous dream sequence of Solomon engages us.  There is the basic tendency of human nature to dream of obtaining some sort of incredible wealth or superhuman powers—that is the background for the dream story in the Book of Kings.

For nearly every civilization has in its own cultural heritage some story, some great myth about how one might achieve their fondest hopes and reach the impossible dream.  Each country tradition has stories that perpetuate this myth:

• Aladin’s Lamp in Persia
• Irish Leprechauns
• The Lord of the Rings fantasy
• Marvel Comic Book Heroes: Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man, and of course Superman which I think is the American equivalent of this myth where the ordinary man (Clark Kent) achieves super human powers –superman.
• The List can go on………….

But when we hear the story of Solomon’s dream, there is a difference because he is given a golden opportunity—why? Because it is no ordinary genie in a bottle or a leprechaun but the Lord God himself who makes the offer: “Ask something of me and I will give it to you…” Whatever you want, Solomon, and it is yours!”  A cure for cancer, the perfect ballistic missile system to make your kingdom impregnable and end war forever, or perhaps enough money to end poverty now and disease and greed once and for all?  Poor Solomon, it seems he just did not have the common sense and foresight to know what to ask for. He blew his only chance to make it really big in the world:  All he wanted was to be the Lord’s faithful servant and to govern his people with wisdom and justice, to lead them wisely and justly.

In Luke’s text on prayer, Jesus is asking us to bring to God everything in our prayer—all of our wants, desires, hopes and aspirations.  Pray about everything—for forgiveness, for the coming kingdom, for personal tranquility and security, and to do so with persistence and trust.  We may not receive our God coming to us in dreams asking us what we want but he does ask us that question on a daily basis so that we can develop what I would call a discipline of desire—What is it that we really wish for, want with all our heart, long and yearn for. For the Men of faith at First Presbyterian, it was a deeper connection with their families and others and recognition by them.

So what would you have asked for in Solomon’s place?  The last time you really wanted something desperately, what was it? What was the last thing you prayed for, prayed your hearts out for the Lord to give you? Ask your selves that question honestly in prayer and you will make discoveries that will transform you.

YOUR TREASURE, YOUR HEART

Matthew 6: 19-24

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

July 18, 2010 (Sermon on the Mt. series, No. 4)

These are hot summer days, and it’s surely tempting to stay home and not show up for church.  That reminds me of the story of the man who received a knock on his bedroom door on Sunday morning.  It was his mother.  He was still snoozing.  She said, “It’s time to go to church.”  He said, “Oh Mom, do I have to go?”  She said, “Yes.”: He replied, “Well, give me two reasons I have to go.”  She said, “Because you’re 46 years old, and you’re the pastor of the church.”   OK, it’s time to get to the sermon.

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  (Matthew 6:21)

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is the heart of Jesus’ teachings.  It gives us an opportunity to struggle, and today’s text brings us a struggle with another of the hard sayings of Jesus.  This won’t be easy, so I will start by moving gradually on a path toward the struggle.

We’ve often heard that life is a pilgrimage, a journey, and the journey inevitably involves twists and turns and struggles.  From John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to any memoir we might consider writing about our own life, we are telling stories about our life journey—as we move through the mountain tops and the valleys, the sunshine and the fog, the slough of despond and—the Emerald City.

The Emerald City, of course, is the destination Dorothy is seeking as she travels the yellow brick road in Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.  Dorothy sees her life in Kansas as flat and dull; she thinks that her treasure lies somewhere else—“somewhere over the rainbow,” as she sings (through the voice of Judy Garland). 

Legends have often reminded us that our pot of gold will come at the end of the rainbow.  So, Dorothy heads out on her journey, joined by her friends—the Tin Woodman,  Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion.  Dorothy is hoping to find her treasure “over the rainbow” and Tin Man is looking for a heart and Scarecrow is looking for a brain, and Cowardly Lion is looking for courage.  They each think that there is some magical treasure (or wizard) that will bring them what they want.  But their transformation comes in discovering that what they want they already have.

TheWizard of Oz is an enchanting story, and it may help us understand Jesus’ words about our treasure and our heart.  Dorothy keeps singing, “and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”  We often think of the American dream as a house and land and investments and savings.  Now with a limping economy, we’re having a hard time with investments and savings, and housing values are lower too.  Our dreams seem farther off; but we Americans continue to dream about success—and success usually is measured by material gain. 

Today here we are on our yellow brick road—on our life journey—and we come up against Jesus’ words:  “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also…You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Those words stop us in our tracks!  These are tough words.  Where is our true treasure?  Is it found in material values – or spiritual values?  Clarence Jordan says that there are two measuring sticks by which we measure a treasure.  One is the measuring stick of the world—materialism.  The second is the measuring stick of Jesus’ own life.  Our society pushes us to choose the first one, so we measure our life by “rings and things—money, stocks and bonds, houses and lands, and pleasures we can buy.  We tend to call that “success.”  This measuring stick is based on the principle:  A person’s life consists in the abundance of our possessions.  And many people choose a vocation based on this principle—which job can I take to make the most money?  How can I accumulate the most money before I die?

On her yellow brick road, I wonder if Dorothy really believes that she will find her pot of gold—her windfall of money—at the end of the rainbow.  In her fantasy, she must be imagining that the wonderful Wizard of Oz will surely pull the strings to make her rich.  But from the story, we know this doesn’t happen.  The wizard is really a fraud, a cowering little man masquerading as a wizard. 

The second way we measure our treasure is given to us by Jesus himself.  The measuring stick is his own life, his values.  When we decide to follow Jesus, we will choose his values, spiritual values—love, humility, unselfishness, generosity, compassion. We will choose to care for those around us—with our time and money.  But if we’re focused on materialism, we can ignore Jesus’ values.  When we’re in our materialism mode, we can only see fashionable clothes, the latest gadgets, and the secret wish that we’ll grow up to make as much money as LeBron James, the great basketball star.

But quickly we say, “But does it have to be either-or—materialism or Jesus?” Can’t we have some of each?  Can’t we live the good life with finer things of life, and still choose spiritual values?”

Clarence Jordan says, “And here is a great mystery:  Why has the western world, and America in particular, which measures most of its values on this materialistic scale, been attracted to the religion of Jesus Christ, when Jesus ruthlessly condemns materialism.”  (p. 91, Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount)  Jesus clearly has trouble with material possessions; after all, he was born poor, and he worked as an itinerant preacher, living “on the road” with whatever food and shelter was given to him. 

Can we have it both ways—material riches and spiritual riches?  Listen to what Jesus says:   “The body depends on the eyes for light.  Now if your eyes are in focus, then the body will have clear light.  But if your eyes are not in focus, then your whole body will be in confused darkness.”  (Matthew 6:22-23, Cotton Patch Version)

What’s he saying?   Our sense of values is to the soul what the eye is to the body.  It helps us see things in their proper perspective.  If both eyes are seeing clearly, we are not confused.  But if your eye is out of focus from looking at more than one object at the same time, your “light” will be darkness.  You won’t see anything clearly. (p. 93, Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount)

Jesus seems to be saying that to regulate our life by materialistic and spiritual standards of measurement is like a person who tries to look at two things at once and sees neither.  (Remember the donkey that died standing between two bales of hay; he couldn’t decide which one to eat.)  We must choose whether we will look at things through the eyes of Christ or through the eyes of the material world.  That’s why Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and Mammon.”  Mammon is money, or better stated, the POWER of money.  Money can capture our total attention and energy; it can become an addiction.  That’s why we say money is a power. 

Clarence Jordan says, “Notice that Jesus doesn’t say you shouldn’t serve two masters, but that you can’t.”  “You cannot serve God and Mammon—the power of money.”  Clarence adds: This is not advice—it is law, like the law of gravity.  In other words, the mind of God and the mind of the secular world are in direct contradiction. Loyalty must be given to one or the other.   

Now this surely puts you and me in a drastic dilemma.  Frankly, it makes me squirm like a worm on a hot brick—on this yellow brick road.  This is a serious struggle on our journey.  How can we reconcile this dilemma?

Our American society runs on materialism.  Our entire economy is based on consumerism—Madison Avenue advertising directs all its forces to create increased desire for goods and services.  We are surrounded by a consuming society where much of our worth is based on the dollars we have—or the house we own or the money we’ve accumulated.

Then we come to worship—and the word “worship” is a contraction of the word “worth-ship.”  We come here to find direction in making a proper evaluation of our worth (worth-ship) and our life.  In today’s text Jesus is doing exactly this—giving his disciples direction in how to properly evaluate our life and worth.  In a culture where money can easily be our god, Jesus is reminding us of the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Our worth is based on God and God’s gift.  All we have is God’s gift.  All we are is God’s gift.  If we’ve managed to earn or inherit money, that’s a gift.  We are to be good stewards.  We are to keep our eye focused on the spiritual values of our faith rather than the materialistic values of our culture.

And that brings me back to Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz.  I think one of the reasons this story has lasted through the years is that it captures for us our dilemma.  Do we follow the yellow brick road in a fantasy of riches at the end of the rainbow?  Or do we realize that there is not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There is no Wizard who will bring us all the glitzy things we may wish for or want.

The fascinating thing about the story is that Dorothy discovers that what she really values is at home, where she lives—at her doorstep in Kansas.  And the Tin Man who wants a heart discovers that he already has a heart.  He is already compassionate and kind. The Scarecrow wants a brain, but he discovers that he has a brain. And the Lion discovers that he is not cowardly, but full of courage.

The spiritual values that are at the heart of our faith are readily available.  We simply need to become aware and claim them.  Our next step is to adopt Jesus’ values and find a way to share what we have, to spread our resources to those who need it.  Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, our friend who lives at Rutba House in Walltown, speaks of “economic friendships.”  We find ways to help those nearby through the sharing of our money.  Relational generosity.  One example was a person who had enormous hospital bills, but had no insurance.  His fellow church members negotiated to reduce some of the costs, then pitched in with their contributions and paid the bills.  Out of this experience the church members decided that they could provide this financial help for anyone in the church who lacked insurance.  So they formed a little health care co op.  They wanted to make sure that no one was burdened by heavy medical bills.  (See Wilson-Hartgrove, God’s Economy, pp. 158-159.  Also see www.christianhealthcareministries.org)

It’s possible that we can find ways to pool our resources so that all can benefit.  That’s what church is all about.  Part of the answer to our struggle, our materialistic-spiritual dilemma, lies in covenant generosity.  That’s what happened in Acts 2.  When the Christian church was born, the people contributed what they had, so that there was not a needy person among them.  Where our heart is, there is our treasure. 

On our life journey we may search far and wide; but often our heart’s treasure is not “over the rainbow,” but right at our doorstep.  We don’t need to spend our energies chasing the power of money, as if money is god.  God is not “out there.”  God is not at the end of the rainbow or at the high end of the stock market. God is here.  God is with us here and now.  Dorothy found her treasure back at home, at her doorstep in Kansas.

T.S. Eliot wrote:   

We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Our job is to focus on today— the goodness of friendships, the gift of being a part of each other’s lives, the chance to live as covenant people, the opportunity to share our money to make sure that everyone’s needs are met.

Our heart’s treasure is not far off, but right before our eyes.  When our heart is invested in God’s work, we will find that our treasure is right before us, in the opportunities that we are given each day.  As the African proverb says, “It is the heart that gives, the fingers merely let go.”

Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Matthew 6:7-15

A sermon by Mel Williams

Watts Street Baptist Church

July 11, 2010 (Sermon on the Mount series, No. 4)

When the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray,” he gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. It’s the one prayer that all Christians know.

Let’s say it together—slowly. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.  Amen.

Listen to this free translation that may come closer to the way the first disciples understood it:

O God, who is unto us like a father and mother.  Who is the power of heaven…let that time soon come when the whole world recognizes you as the God of the universe….and let your will to save the world and mend the creation become manifest on earth as it is already manifest in heaven.…and forgive us our sins as we have already forgiven those who have sinned against us….and let not Satan come on full force, for then we have no chance….(from Krister Stendahl)

The disciples wanted a prayer that would be for them a kind of fraternity badge—like a class song.  So Jesus gave this prayer that does not at all reflect a narrow, parochial theology.  There is not a single word in this prayer that can’t be said by a Jew.  There is nothing overtly Christian about it.  It’s a prayer totally shaped by God’s dream, and the early church didn’t even dare to add “in the name of Jesus.”  So the prayer is a non-setting apart prayer, not a narrow identity badge.  But it places all Christians on the main highway of God toward the Kingdom.

Krister Stendahl has said, “The Lord’s Prayer is nothing but a big shout for the coming of the Kingdom.”  (Stendahl, “God’s Hope—the Kingdom,” taped lecture, Columbia Seminary, 1978)

Everything that’s important about the Judeo-Christian faith resonates in this prayer.  It’s also crucial to remember that Jesus taught us the prayer.  Nowhere do we get a clearer insight into the mind and heart of Jesus.  Here we learn how Jesus understands the world—and how we are invited to understand it.  We are Jesus’ disciples, gathered around him, knowing that he is praying along with us.  As he prays with us, he knows that we are praying this prayer out of our human longings and pain.  We are praying to God in the midst of cancer and arthritis and war and poverty and grief.

In the next few minutes I want to go through the prayer, looking at each petition.  You can follow by noting the lines of the Lord’s Prayer on the cover of the worship bulletin.  The first thing about the prayer is that we are speaking to God.  “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed – holy—is your name.’  The first three petitions in the prayer have to do with God:    Thy name be holy.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.  The Lord’s Prayer is addressed to God, giving God the supreme place in our lives.  God is at the center of our life—as individuals and as a community.  

If we imagine ourselves lost in a dark forest, we might be feeling that there are dangers and threats all round us.  We’re anxious and afraid.  Then someone comes up to us, calls our name, and walks with us.  God speaks, and we respond. That’s what this prayer is—our response to God.  God speaks to us, convincing us that we’re not alone in this forest.  To be alone would be unbearable.   So, with our worries and fears, we say “Our father.”  Those two words are enormously important.

Jesus prayed to God, using the Aramaic word Abba/Amma.  The word means “daddy, mommy.”  These words tell us that the world is basically, ultimately friendly.  To say “Our Father” means that the strongest force in the world is affectionate, loving, caring.

Our Father.  Notice that the prayer doesn’t say, “My father.”  When you see this prayer before you, you quickly see that there is no “I, me, my, or mine” in the prayer.  There is no self-centered focus here.  I grew up singing the old hymn “I Come to the Garden Alone.”  In that hymn there are 27 personal pronouns—I, me, my mine.  But the Lord’s Prayer—the Disciples’ Prayer-- speaks of we, us, our.  To say OUR FATHER is to say a mouthful.  It’s a phrase that makes everyone related.  The “our” crushes all of our favorite cultural, national, racial myths.

When Jesus says “Our Father,” he is teaching us that we are all one.  God made us to be one people, and Jesus came to keep us that way.  We are one human family, and I love thinking about how often, over the entire world, the Lord’s Prayer is being prayed.  I suspect that there is not a single minute where, day or night, someone is praying the Lord’s Prayer—in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Swahili, and in all the languages on earth.  We are all one when we pray “Our Father.”  (from John Killenger, The God Named Hallowed, p. 12)

When we pray “thy will be done,” we are asking for God’s will to prevail over my wants and wishes.  God’s will is a phrase that can be misused; some people can say that an illness or a death must be God’s will.  Leslie Weatherhead says that it was not God’s “intentional will” that Jesus die; but he says that there are some situations which we may see as God’s “circumstantial will.”  God cannot always stop unjust circumstances; but God promises to be with us through whatever hardship or pain we encounter.

Jesus teaches us to pray “Thy Kingdom come” —this is the heart of the Disciples’ Prayer.  Here Jesus is teaching us to long for God’s dream, God’s agenda.  And God’s agenda is that every person be treated with respect, love, and dignity.  Regardless of age, color, class, origin, sexual orientation, all people will have the food, education, housing, heath care, and dignity needed to live the abundant life that is promised to all people. The central mark of the Kingdom is justice.  If we had to say in one word what is the central thing Jesus was about, we’d have to say “the Kingdom.”

We don’t speak of kings now, but the term “kingdom” is intended to mean realm, commonwealth.   We sometimes paraphrase it as “the beloved community.”  Will Campbell called it “the God Movement.”  Jesus said that the Kingdom is at hand, and all of his healings and miracles point toward the magnetic center, the Kingdom.  He told us, “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all the rest will fall into place.”

But we know that we can’t pray for the Kingdom, with integrity, without doing something to demonstrate that the Kingdom is here.  We can say that the Kingdom is already here, in Jesus’ life and teachings.  But we also speak of helping to announce the Kingdom, to bring in the Kingdom.  We need to do all we can to announce that God’s reign is at hand.  We do that when we build a Habitat house, prepare and serve a meal for our sisters and brothers who are homeless.  When we break down barriers and befriend people in Walltown or El Salvador or Russia, we are announcing the Kingdom.  And Kingdom of God is inevitably a political term.  It means that no country is the Kingdom, no political faction is the Kingdom.  Our first allegiance is to God and God’s dream.

These first three petitions focus on God; but the next three focus on our human needs. Give us daily bread, forgive us for our trespasses, and lead us not into temptation.  After these lofty words about God, the next thing after God is BREAD.  When we pray for the Kingdom, we’re praying for enough bread for everybody.  Even with all the resources in the world, we know that 35,000 people die every day as a result of starvation.  Our nation is only 6 percent of the world’s population, but we use 40 percent of the world’s resources.  My parents used to tell me that during World War II, when food items were scarce, food was rationed—distributed in fair amounts, so that no one would have too much, and no one would have too little.  “Give us our rations for today” may be getting closer to the meaning of “Give us our daily bread.” 

When we come to the Lord’s Supper, we all receive a morsel of bread, and I wonder if that morsel is intended to give us the spirit of the Lord’s Prayer.  “May this taste of bread become a taste of God’s Kingdom where everyone has enough to eat.”  It is this spirit that is reflected in the prayer from Latin America:  “Lord, to those who have hunger, give bread.  To those who have bread, give the hunger for justice.”

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others:  In essence, this means “forgive us in proportion to the way we have forgiven others.”  Does that mean if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us?  No.  God’s forgiveness is unconditional; but Jesus seems to be saying that an un-forgiving spirit is one of the major sins for which we need to be forgiven. Pride keeps us from forgiving others, and it’s pride that blocks us from accepting forgiveness. 

It’s not easy—forgiving those who have wronged us, whether they be individuals or nations.  As we are able to forgive others, we enter into a deeper relationship with our forgiving God.   And by forgiving, we also restore each other’s humanity.  That’s why we say:  It makes no sense to go around unforgiven—or unforgiving.  We are free to live the way of Jesus who said, “Father, forgive them.”

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  Temptation is a test—a final test over whether we will declare our loyalty to God or to our own self-interest.  Satan is the personification of the evil force, and temptation is a tactic that Satan uses.  He used it with Jesus in the wilderness, tempting him with reputation and power; but Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan.”

Deliver us from evil is a plea to God to strengthen us with faith and courage, so that we can withstand the forces of the Evil One.  We see evil in the ongoing struggle with racism, militarism, and a disdain for the plight of the poor.  We’ve often heard, “Evil triumphs, only when good people do nothing.”  God delivers us from evil by prompting our faith and courage, so we can make a witness against every form of injustice.

The Lord’s Prayer is a radical statement of God’s dream.  It’s a loud shout for God’s Kingdom—where all God’s children find bread, forgiveness, love, dignity, and hope. 

Listen for this re-stating of the Prayers from the New Zealand Prayer Book:

Eternal Spirit, Life-giver, Pain-bearer, Love-maker,

Source of all that is and that shall be,

Father and Mother of us all,

Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!

The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come to earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.

From trials too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,

Now and forever, Amen.

PRAY IN SECRET

Matthew 6:1-6

A homily by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

July 4, 2010 (Sermon on the Mount series, No. 3)

We know that Jesus’ message in the Sermon on the Mount is a formidable challenge—love your enemies, judge not, don’t be anxious.  We can’t do any of these without God’s help.  That must be the reason that the middle section, the heart of Jesus’ Lesson, is devoted to encouragement in prayer.

When you pray, go into your private room, and shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret…..(Matthew 6:6)

In this section of the Sermon/Lesson on the Mount, Jesus is urging us to look inward at our motives and attitude when we pray.  He was not at all impressed by people who made an outward show of their praying.  Some people apparently got some ego boost by hearing how they sounded when they prayed.  They were praying to look good and sound good to the people around them.  That kind of praying we might call “doing the right thing for the wrong reason.”

To counter this public prayer posturing, Jesus says, “Go into your private room, and pray in secret.”  What does he mean?

Sometimes praying can be done out of duty, and it can also be a matter of public performance.  In the time of Jesus Jews were encouraged to pray at least three times a day—at 9 and 12 and 3. 

Muslims also have designated times to pray.  When the time comes, people stop their work and pray.  These traditions help to make prayer a daily habit.  But the danger is that the habit could become mechanical, forced, and done to be seen by people, rather than genuine communication with God.  A certain preacher once described an ornate, elaborate prayer offered in a Boston church as “the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience.”  When we pray, the audience is not a Boston crowd or a Durham crowd; the audience is God.  The goal is contact, communion with God.  (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, volume 1, p. 197)

That’s why Jesus says, “Go and pray in secret.” I wonder if what he means is:  Find your identity not in what people think of you.  Find your identity in God.  We may spend a lifetime trying to find someone who validates our life. Our parents tell us who we are, or we may rely on a spouse or partner to tell us who we are. Then when they move or die, what’s left of us?  Do we have value only in relation to someone else?  Does our job or profession tell us who we are?  Do we need clients, customers, and colleagues to tell us who we are?  Are we enmeshed in someone’s image of us? 

The spiritual life is a journey away from the exterior self.  We are far more than people’s image of us. That must surely be the reason Jesus says, “Pray in secret.”  Find your identity, your true self, in God.

How do we do that?  For me it’s a matter of learning to pray in silence. Prayer deepens our interior life.  Richard Rohr says, “Only prayer lets you realize that who you are is who your were in God before anybody thought anything about you…whether you are good or bad”—or right or wrong. (Rohr, Jesus’ Plan for a New World, p. 74) 

Like most of us, I grew up with prayer being only words:  “God is great, God is good” and “Now I lay me down to sleep…”  Or “God, help me think clearly to pass this test.”  Ann Lamott says there are two kinds of prayers:  Help me prayers and thank you prayers.  Words, words, words.  It took me a long time to understand that one of the life-giving aspects of prayer is wordless prayer.  Jesus even says that your Father knows what you need before you ask.  So, why not sit in silence?

So often, it seems that we’re using words to nudge God, urge God, pester God to answer our prayer.  All these spoken prayers can be helpful; they might even be a form of spiritual psychotherapy where we are pouring out our needs as a kind of talk therapy.  Spoken prayer has its place, as we’ll hear next week when we consider the prayer Jesus gave us, the Lord’s Prayer, a spoken prayer.  When we pray, we need words, but we also have needs that are deeper than words.

Some years ago as part of my spiritual practice, I started sitting by my candle for a period of 20 minutes in silence.  Part of me liked the silence, but I also had to work to quiet my mind—“monkey mind” as some call it.  How can we stop our noisy mind?  In silence how can we move beyond thinking, analyzing, planning, judging—to reach a place of simply be-ing?  

But sitting in silence made me uneasy.  I would sit in stillness and close my eyes.  But I found myself thinking about death.  I went to talk to a spiritual director.  I asked him to help me understand why in the silence I start thinking about dying.  He said, “Silence is a form of dying; you’re dying to your ego—giving up your ego.”  That perspective helped me to relax into the silence —to just be.

EvelynUnderhill, a spiritual writer, has said that we spend our lives conjugating three verbs:  to Want, to Have, and to Do.  But none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, for they are transcended by the fundamental verb, to Be.  “Being, not wanting, having and doing is the essence of the spiritual life.”  (from Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life)

We sit in silence, first to release our internal churnings, and to rest—to be,

content with the gift of this present moment.  We sit in silence to stop trying to make something happen—and to allow God to give us a gift.

One useful tool to help us relax with silence is to focus on our breathing.  At times I use a prayer word, a mantra—ruach, a Hebrew word which means “breath, wind, Spirit.”  Say the word quietly in my mind, with the breath calling me back to the silence.  In other words, breathing becomes a way to pray.

I love Thomas Merton’s little poem:  “What I wear is pants.  What I do is live.  How I pray is breathe.”  Of course, Merton is talking about more than literal breath; he sees breath as the gateway, the entry point, into what he calls “the solitude of your own heart.”

In the solitude of our heart, we unite with God’s heart.  It is this union with God that is the goal of the spiritual life.  We find our identity in God, not in what other people think of us.

I think that’s why Jesus said, “Stop making a show of your praying.  When you pray, go into your room and shut the door.”  Go into your heart and wait there, content with the grace of God.

Amen.

Quotes on cover of order of worship:

But when you pray, go into your room

and shut the door and pray to your Father

who is in secret; and your Father who sees

in secret will reward you.

                             Jesus, Matthew 6:6

Empty yourself completely

and sit waiting,
content with the grace of God. 

                                    Romuald’s Brief Rule

What I wear is pants

What I do is live

How I pray is breathe.

                             Thomas Merton

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

Matthew 5:38-48

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

June 27, 2010 (Sermon on the Mount series, #2)

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  (Mt. 5:44)

When we come to worship, I’ve often thought that it would help if we could release our internal clutter at the church door—hand over our burdens and guilt and stress and worries, so we can be open to the newness of the Spirit.

Likewise, if we’re going to be open to understanding the Sermon/Lesson on the Mount, it would help if we could release some of our assumptions and obsessions.  It would help if we released our tendency toward power, possessions, and violence. Let them go.  But that’s a tall order.  If we cannot release these tendencies, we may experience the Sermon on the Mount as harsh and humanly impossible.

But we come here to discover what we and God can do together.  We come here to discover the impossible things we can do, with God’s help.  Do you remember the words from Alice in Wonderland?  “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

On our spiritual journey, it also helps to remember that a useful definition of God is “one who does a new thing.”  (Isaiah 43:19)  God is not stuck in a predictable rut.  God is inevitably moving the world toward newness.  Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount comprise a paradigm shift, a move toward newness, a new community—based on love, forgiveness, and non-violence.  We are Jesus’ followers, so we need to listen carefully to his disturbing words.

You have heard it said, “Love your neighbors and hate your enemy.”  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  (Matthew 5:43-44)  This is one of those impossible things we hope we can do before breakfast.  But we need God’s help, because let’s face it. Our first impulse is to hate our enemy.  When our daughter was five months old, our next door neighbor decided to light firecrackers just outside the baby’s window—it was the Fourth of July.  Now firecrackers are OK, but not under my baby’s window.  I roared out the door, in all my Papa Bear fury.  I don’t recall exactly what I said to Mr. Firecracker, but I’m sure they were not words that I learned in Sunday school.  I acted on Papa Bear impulse.  A little later I remembered that Jesus said “Don’t hate your enemy; love him.”  But he didn’t say I had to like him—or his firecrackers!

To understand Jesus, let’s back up and consider his words just before he said “Love your enemy.”  “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil.  But if one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”  (Matthew 5:38-39)   An eye for an eye is violence for violence.  But we also need to remember Gandhi’s words: “If we live by an eye for an eye, we all will go blind.”

There are two major responses to violence—fight or flight.  But Jesus is offering a third way—nonviolent direct action.  Walter Wink has given an excellent explanation of Jesus’ Third Way in his book Engaging the Powers.  Jesus was not submissive; he was not a doormat.  He frequently challenged the powers that be.  Jesus is giving us a lesson in the effectiveness of nonviolence.

In earlier years, the rule of fighting was:  If someone knocks your eye out, you can knock his eye out.  A kind of equal exchange.  You cannot do more harm than was done to you—limited retaliation.  But Jesus says, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek also.”

Now, it might seem easier to ignore this teaching.  We might even get the impression that Jesus is teaching us to be cowards.  It sounds masochistic—let someone hit you in the face?  But remember—Jesus is teaching a lesson in nonviolence.  The people to whom Jesus was talking were living under the heel of a harsh, occupying government.  The people were virtual slaves. They were oppressed and regularly mistreated by arrogant soldiers or officials.

So, how do victims respond to their oppressors?  “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”  Why the right cheek?  In that day it was a right-handed world, so a right fist would hit the person on the LEFT cheek.  An open-handed slap would also strike the left cheek.  To hit the right cheek with a fist would require the LEFT hand, but in that society the left hand was used only for unclean tasks.

The only way one would strike the right cheek with the right hand would be with the back of the hand.  We are dealing here with insult, not a fistfight.  A backhand slap was the usual way of admonishing someone who is inferior.  Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews.  All of these are unequal relations.  If someone tried to retaliate, it would bring harsher punishment. So, the normal response would be cowering and submitting. (from Walter Wink)

The people listening to Jesus were all subjected to these indignities; they were forced to stifle their outrage over this dehumanizing treatment.  It all came from a hierarchical system of class, race, gender, age, and status—all as a result of imperial occupation by the Romans.

Why then does Jesus tell these humiliated people to turn the other cheek?  Because by turning the other cheek, they rob their oppressor of the power to humiliate them.   The person who turns the other cheek is saying, “Try again.  Your first blow failed to humiliate me.  I deny you that power. I’m a human being just like you.  You cannot demean me.”

Striking with the back of the hand was the way to keep the subject in an inferior position.  If the oppressor hits with a fist, he makes the other person his equal, a peer.  The point of the back of the hand is to reinforce the inequality.  But turning the other cheek means that the striker cannot shame and humiliate; he is stripped of his power to dehumanize the other. 

As Gandhi taught, “The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.”  (from Walter Wink)  We saw this principle enacted last week when Rev. William Barber (head of the state NAACP), Dr. Tim Tyson (Duke professor), and our friend Rev. Nancy Petty (pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church) were arrested in Raleigh when they protested the Wake County School Board’s efforts to re-segregate the Wake County Schools.  They got arrested—civil disobedience, saying in essence, “You will not humiliate us.  We will be heard.”

Those of us who lived through the 1960’s civil rights movement can see the replication of Jesus’ nonviolence in the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.  When the forces of bigotry and racism were raising their heads in the Deep South, blacks were being persecuted by tyrannical whites.  Blacks were not only lynched, but they were pushed and shoved—and even dogs and fire hoses were unleashed in Alabama, while TV cameras recorded the scene for the whole world to see.

Martin King said, “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.  We shall meet your physical force with soul force.  Do to us what you will, we shall continue to love you.”  (p. 40, Strength to Love)  In other words, slap us with the back of your hand, and we will turn the other cheek.

These words are an amazing witness to the power of Jesus’ message of nonviolence—in our lifetime.  But it is counter to the American way.  The major American strategy is called redemptive violence.  We think that more guns and more wars and more weapons are the answer.  But Jesus keeps calling us to oppose every form of violence.

He said “Love your enemies,” but he didn’t say, “Don’t make any.”  There are some people who are cruel and corrupt and troublesome.  Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.”  He also said “love your enemy,” because sometimes they might be the same person—like the firecracker neighbor outside my daughter’s window.

Love your enemies does not mean that we like them.  We love them for one reason—because God loves them.  And we are made in the image of God, to reflect the character of God.  We are to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

Oh, but you may say, “That’s a nice ideal; but it’s impractical.  Being a nonviolent Christian doesn’t work.”  G.K. Chesterton said “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it’s been found difficult and not tried.”

The essential mark of lived Christianity is a nonviolent life.  It starts with seeing that behind every face is the face of God.  But how do you deal with someone who has brutally murdered another person?  Is God’s face behind that face?  Yes, but it has been distorted by a mangled and violent past.  We can say with some certainty that people who commit acts of brutal violence have themselves been victims of violence, and they have not overcome the consequences of that brutality.

Some of us remember that Marietta Jaeger stood in this pulpit about 15 years ago, telling of her struggle to come to terms with the murder of her eight year-old daughter.  The family had been on a camping trip when their daughter was pulled from a tent in the night and murdered.  Marietta said, “I was filled with anger.  I could have killed him with my own hands.”  But, she said, “Over time God changed my heart, and I worked to make sure that the man was not given a death sentence.”  She said, “His death would not bring my daughter back.”  

The family of the UNC student body president, Eve Carson, who was murdered, took the same position recently.  They did not want to return violence for violence, so they rejected the death penalty.  As we’ve often heard, “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”  Violence only perpetuates violence, and the cycle must be interrupted.

This is Jesus’ mission—to turn violence into love.  This is the message of the cross, and this is the witness we make when we live a nonviolent life.

Ruby Bridges was a six-year old black child who in 1961 went to school each day to integrate the New Orleans public schools.  Every day she faced an angry, vengeful mob screaming obscenities and death threats at her.  One day, as she was surrounded by federal marshals, facing the mob, she stopped and silently opened and closed her mouth while looking directly at the mob.

Robert Coles, the Harvard psychiatrist, later interviewed her after looking at the films of Ruby facing the mob.  Coles discovered that she was praying.  She told Coles that she prayed because the people needed praying for.  Her parents and minister and teachers had taught her the prayer she prayed.  “What did you pray?” he asked her.  She said, “Please God, try to forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.”  Then she said, “Well, you see, when Jesus had that mob in front of him, that’s what he said.”

Love your enemies.  It sounds impossible, but we can do it—with God’s help.  To love our enemies, the place to start is to pray for them.  Amen.

What Are You Doing Here?                                         Diane Eubanks Hill

I Kings 19:1-4, 8-15                                       Watts Street Baptist Church

Luke 8:26-39                                                                        June 20, 2010

Both of today’s lectionary texts focus on an individual’s close encounter with God’s awesome power.  In the I Kings text, Elijah has recently proven his strength and courage in military battles against the enemy.  But then he comes up against Jezebel who swears that she’ll see that he dies by the next day.  Elijah flees to the desert and, in desperation prays that God will let him die.

Instead of dying, Elijah meets God at Horeb.  God is not in the wind, a wind so strong that it splits mountains and breaks rocks.  God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire.  But when Elijah hears what is described here as “sheer silence,” he recognizes God.  Elijah wraps his face in his mantle and stands at the entrance of the cave.  And God inquires of Elijah, “What are you doing here?”

Elijah desperately tries to explain, whining a bit about how he’s the only one who has been faithful.  God interrupts with an action plan:  A few minutes ago, Al read “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus….”  But God gets even more specific:  “…when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.  Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat… as prophet in your place.”

My goodness!  Terrified, Elijah has asked God to let him die, and what response does he get from God?  God replies:  “What in the world are you doing cowering out here?”  In infinite wisdom, God, who knows Elijah inside out, lays before him a road map, an action plan:  “Get up and get to work!”  And Elijah is on his way!

One might easily judge God’s response to be rather callous.  But God knew Elijah.  God knew what Elijah needed. Did God heal Elijah from his fear?  We don’t have any evidence of that.  But whatever happened was a miracle, because Elijah was immediately back on track.  Maybe it’s a bigger miracle that Elijah, in spite of his fears, was able to continue on with life.

Then we turn to the Luke text.  What an unusual and powerful story!  We can assume that this man possessed by demons is a Gentile.  It’s probable that Jesus is in Gentile territory, since a herd of swine is close by. 

The Gerasenes, in whose territory this story is set, respond with fear when they see the man now appropriately clothed and sitting at the feet of Jesus.  Their fear likely has nothing to do with the frightening episode with the pigs; their fear, instead, is from seeing that Jesus has the power to release and restore this man whom they had tried in vain to keep under lock and chains. They ask Jesus to leave, and he does, but not before making this once outcast Gentile man, the first person to be commissioned to preach the gospel.  Understandably, the man begs to stay on with Jesus, but Jesus sends him on his way, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” (8:39)

What rich stories—and filled with all sorts of instructions and inspiration for us!

The question “What are you doing here?” that we hear twice in the Elijah story could be applied to the man healed of the demons as well.  And it certainly could be applied to us.  “What are you doing here?”  “What are you doing standing around with your hands in your pockets?”  “What are you doing resting on your laurels?”  “What are you doing cowering in fear?”  “What are you doing lingering on the sidelines and not jumping into life with all you’ve got?”

In both stories, God’s miraculous power is at work.  Before his encounter with God, Elijah wants to die. After his encounter with God, Elijah is back on track and on his way. 

Clearly, God’s power in Jesus heals the man possessed by demons and sends him home, to those who had bound him and isolated him, to preach the Gospel, to witness to the healing power of Jesus.   Jesus instructs the man to tell them what God has done for him.  And the man, indeed, does just that!

Which is the greater miracle?  Many of you have been healed of all sorts of demons and difficulties.  The pain, whether emotional or physical or spiritual, that once bound you, now has very little power over you.  And you live each day in gratitude to God and in service to those around you.  Others of you continue to serve faithfully, to witness to God’s redeeming grace, in spite of continued difficulties.   Both are powerful miracles!

I don’t know why some are healed, and others continue to do battle with the same demons.  I suppose this is one of the enduring mysteries of life.  Parker Palmer reflects on this same question in relation to his own experience with depression.  He observes

Twice…I spent endless months in the snake pit of the soul…(where) I wrestled with the desire to die….I could feel nothing except the burden of my own life and…the apparent futility, of trying to sustain it.  I understand why some depressed people kill themselves:  they need the rest.  But I do not understand why others are able to find new life in the midst of a living death, though I am one of them. (Parker Palmer, “All the Way down:  Depression and the Spiritual Journey,” Weavings, September/October 1998, pp. 31-41.)

Clearly, all of us are at a variety of points on the spectrum of repair and disrepair, depending on the year, or the day, or the hour!  The truth, however, is that even in the midst of pain and darkness, we are called to bear witness to the God who is faithful to be with us, no matter how painful our struggle, the God who walks with us in the darkness and who sees through that darkness, the God who has done great things for us all. 

What are we doing here? 

I visit occasionally with one of our members who has been mostly bed-ridden for 6 or 8 years.  What can she do?  It would be easy for her to turn sour, to give up, to make life miserable for herself and all around her.  Instead, my visits with her are always rich gifts to me!  She asks about my family.  She asks about you—her church family.  We laugh together.  We pray together.  What a powerful testimony of faith!

What are you doing here?  How do you witness to the power of God’s love in your life?

In the same geographic area where our Gospel story is thought to have occurred, we find two bodies of water, both connected with the Jordan River.  The Sea of Galilee is alive with activity.  Fish and plant life flourish as water comes and goes.   It receives and it gives.  We know the other body of water as the Dead Sea.  It receives, but gives nothing.  The same is true of all of us.  When we stop giving, we die.

But here’s the best news:  God only calls us to be who we are.  God knows our gifts, and calls us to invest our gifts, not another person’s gifts. I‘m not called to be like anyone else.  It’s that simple.  God doesn’t call me to give what I don’t have.  What good news!! 

I’m reminded of the story of the man who was a terrific farmer.  Everything he touched grew and flourished.  He was also a faithful Christian and churchman.  And he kept thinking there must be something else he should do in God’s service besides farm.  One day when he was working in his field, he looked up at the clouds.  There, in big, white fluffy letters, stretched across the sky, he saw “GP.”  “GP,” he pondered.  Hmm.  “God must be telling me to go preach.”

He sold the farm and left for seminary.  From that point on, life was a struggle.  He couldn’t put a sermon together.  He was uncomfortable praying publicly.  He hated doing weddings and funerals and visiting in hospitals.  And, worst of all, he missed his farm.  He missed the smell of the dirt and the animals.  He missed walking in the early morning dew.  But he kept on, convinced that God had told him to “Go preach.”

God had some explaining to do, and the farmer-turned-preacher addressed his questions to God as soon as his struggles on this earth ended.  “Whatever were you thinking, telling me to go preach?!”  God replied:  “My dear son, it’s very simple.  You misread the message.  I was delighted in your gifts as a farmer.  I was cheering you on with the message ‘Go plow!’”

It is simple, indeed.  God creates us, gifts and foibles, and calls us to be who we are.  God delights in us and cheers us on.  And when we are true to ourselves, we also find freedom and love and delight.

What are you doing here?

SALT AND LIGHT

Matthew 5:13-16

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

June 13, 2010 (Sermon on the Mount series, No. 1)

Today’s message is the first in a series of summer sermons based on the Sermon on the Mount, the heart of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew, chapters 5 to 7.

Last summer I began working through the Beatitudes, which provides a stair-step beginning of the Sermon, which Clarence Jordan says is really the Lesson on the Mount.  He says that with a sermon, you can sleep through it and then tell the preacher you enjoyed it.  But a lesson is assigned to you, and you are held responsible for it.  “You don’t sleep through lessons, only sermons.”  (from Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith)

The Lesson on the Mount, in Matthew 5 to 7, is a radical document.  It gives instructions to us disciples on the motives, attitude, perceptions, and habits that will guide our actions.  The instructions may seem challenging and daunting; one may be tempted to think that only a spiritually elite class can live them out. But Jesus delivered these words not to prominent people or highly evolved people; he directed these words to rough fishermen, farmers, laborers, women and children.  Everyday folks.  To them—and to us—he says:  “You are the salt of the earth and light of the world….Turn the other cheek…Love your enemies…Do not be anxious…Judge not.”  These are only a few of Jesus’ bold teachings.  How can we ever live them out?  We can do it only through repeated practice and a lot of prayer —which must be the reason Jesus put the Lord’s Prayer smack in the middle of the Sermon.

How can we understand the Sermon?   I mean, the Lesson.  We first need to get clear about who we are as students of Jesus.   If we intend to follow Jesus, then who are we, and what is our calling?   We are made in the image of God.  If we’re created in God’s image, then we will reflect God’s character.  (from Gene Davenport, Into the Darkness: Discipleship in the Sermon on the Mount, Wipf and Stock, 1988) What is God’s character?  It’s stated all through the Hebrew Bible.  “God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”  This is God’s character, and so it is to be our character too.

Jesus searches for word pictures that tell us and remind us who we are.  He says, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”

Salt and light are vivid images; they are metaphors to help us see who we are.  What’s a metaphor?  Long ago someone told me, “You have to say it like it never was, so you can see it like it really is.”  A metaphor is a comparison or contrast to help describe an entity.

You are salt.  Well, not literally salt, but you are like salt.  Sometime we say, “He’s not worth his salt.”  We’ve also used the phrase, “These folks are the salt of the earth,” meaning they are good, kind, everyday folks.  By calling his disciples “salt,” Jesus is giving an enormous compliment—and a mighty challenge.

What’s the purpose of salt?  It has two purposes.  It flavors food, and it also preserves food.  It enhances our food and makes it appetizing.  Some of us need to avoid using too much salt on our food; but again this metaphor is not about literal salt. It’s helping to describe who we disciples are called to be.  We are to help add flavor and goodness to the people we serve. 

Some folks have the impression that Christians are people who take the flavor out of life.  The early Puritans were noted for their grimness, taking the fun out of life.  Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”  Grim and terribly serious, not very salty.  But a gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms.  Joy is the mark of the Christian.  Adding flavor to life is the job of salty Christians.

Salt is also a preservative.  My grandfather had a smoke house where he hung meat that was salted to preserve it.  From my childhood days of entering that smokehouse, I still remember the smell of the salty meat.

For us, salt is usually in a shaker; but Jesus implies that if the salt stays in the shaker, it’s not much good.  Only when you shake it out can the salt do its work.  Only when we are shaken out into the world can we make a difference in the flavor of the community around us 

Salt is also rather inconspicuous; it doesn’t draw attention to itself.  We know many people in this congregation who offer kindness and compassion, and they never mention that they’ve done it.  As we’ve often said, good things can happen if you don’t need to get the credit.  Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.”

Then comes the warning:  “But if the salt has lost its flavor, you can lose your power to salt.” (Clarence Jordan)  We can lose our effectiveness; we can become cowardly, weak.  It can happen if we do not make our witness against all forms of prejudice and violence and oppression.  We are to stay alert and ready to be shaken out.  In other words, be ready to flavor and preserve those who need us.

But not only are you salt, you are also light.  Light is conspicuous.  It shines.  You can see it shining.  At the World Cup commentators speak of “shining moments.”  The writer of the Gospel of John has Jesus saying “I am the light of the world.”  But here in Matthew, Jesus says to the disciples, “You are the light of the world.”  If Jesus is the light, he would be the source of the light; the disciples—we disciples—are transmitters of the light.  (See W. Clyde Tilley, The Surpassing Righteousness:  Evangelism and Ethics in the Sermon on the Mount, Smyth and Helwys, 1992)

But sometimes we can get light in our eyes.  We can become so enamored by our light that we can get carried away.  We can draw attention to ourselves, and then we can start getting stars in our eyes.  As one person wrote, “Forgive me the limelight which to love is my sin.”  (Fredrick Buechner)   But at the same time, Jesus says, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.  Put it on a lampstand where all can see.”

Why does Jesus place such a strong emphasis on light?  I think he knew quite well that the forces of darkness are all around us, and the darkness is always opposing the light.  Watch the news or read the newspaper every day, and much of what we read is about the darkness—murder, car crashes, gangs, drugs, poverty, war, and now the darkness of oil polluting and destroying the fish, birds, and livelihoods of those on the Gulf Coast.  We have been witnessing the degrading of our environment and of people, which is not only a monumental tragedy, but human sinfulness gone rampant.

Light exists to push back darkness.  Even the dark of night can bring uneasiness, fears, and danger.  In the days of segregation, the Ku Klux Klan did its terrible work in the middle of night.  When any state has executed a person, they’ve done it in the night.  Evil is often associated with darkness.  And we’ve heard many times:  “Evil flourishes when good people do nothing.”

Knowing all this, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.”  You are to bring light in the middle of all this darkness.  This is the reason we begin our worship by bringing in the light.  We come here to be illumined by the light, and to be warmed by the light.  We come here to be people of the light.

This light then is a symbol that points ultimately not to us, but to God, to Jesus—the source of the light.  Our job is to carry the light out this door.  One of us, on behalf of all of us, carries the light down this aisle every Sunday—an enormous symbol meaning that each of us leaves here to carry the light, to push back the darkness.  “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”  Yes, let’s all sing it.

How do we push back the darkness?  How do we let our light shine?  By the work we do in the world.  When we build a Habitat house for a family in poverty, we are pushing back the dark.  When we form a faith team to work with an ex-offender re-entering society, we are pushing back the dark.  When we go to El Salvador, where there is a 50 percent poverty rate, we are helping build simple houses and providing scholarships for children to go to public school.  That’s pushing back the dark. 

When we start a One World Market where Third World craftspeople can sell their creations, we are pushing back darkness.  By the way, we recently learned that since 1992, when One World Market began as a mission group, a Saturday store, in this church, One World Market on Ninth Street in Durham has sent 3.5 million dollars back to artisans in 57 countries.  That’s sending out the light, pushing back the dark.

And when we teach our children in Vacation Bible School to extend compassion to those in need, we are teaching them to let their light shine.  And when we extend kindness to each other, we are pushing back the dark.  When we encourage each other to use our talents and gifts, we are bringing more light. 

One more thing about light.  Jesus says, “You are the light of the WORLD.”  He didn’t say you are the light of your home or your church or your workplace.  He said the world.  So, all of us make decisions about what our work in the world will be. 

Of all the pressing needs, what will be the near edge of some great problem that pulls at your heart, your energy, your calling?  Bonnie Griffin, who joined this church about a year ago, has used her leadership to start a casserole ministry.  Bonnie says that she has stayed awake at night worrying about people on the street who don’t have enough to eat.  So, she asked us to find a freezer, so she could get dozens of Watts Street members to make casseroles and keep them in the freezer downstairs.

Now, you may say a casserole is not a big deal; but when we send a freezer full of casseroles down to Urban Ministries, we can feed dozens of hungry people.  Those casseroles become light, pushing back some darkness.  And you might add a dash of salt to put a little more flavor in the dish.

You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.

So may it be.  Amen.

FEAR NOT        

43:1-5a

A homily by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

June 6, 2010 (dedication of anthem in memory of Debbie Sugg)

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you…

You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…

Fear not, for I am with you.  

Isaiah 43:1b, 41, 5a

We have gathered today for the dedication of an anthem, “Fear Not,” commissioned by our church and composed by John Ferguson of St. Olaf College in Minnesota.  The anthem is a gift to our church by Dot and Bob Sugg, given in memory of their daughter, Debbie Sugg, who died in December 2007.  Debbie was a faithful member of our Chancel Choir.  She loved singing and, despite her blindness, she made friends with countless adults and children in the church.  Her love for children resulted in today’s anthem being written for both children’s choir and adult choir.  Today we are honored to hold the dedication of this anthem.

The text for the anthem is Isaiah 43.  The words speak mightily of Debbie Sugg—her spirit and her faith.  She had a strong faith, a fierce determination, and a lack of fear.  Despite her visual disability, she had a fortitude and fearlessness that left us in awe.

Debbie had a keen love for children, and she related easily and gladly to children and youth.  Where did she get this engaging spirit?   In her own early life, she faced many adversities, and she found ways to meet the challenges that came with her blindness.  I remember her brother saying, “Debbie had no fear.”  That’s how she could ride horses and go to grad school, earn a doctorate, sing in choirs, and live her life with courage and positive spirit.

We could say that she was born with that spirit and courage.  And here is where we think Isaiah 43 is so appropriate in describing the spiritual foundation of Debbie’s life.

Think about Debbie as you listen to this text:  “But now thus says the Lord…Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you…when you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.  Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…Do not fear, for I am with you.”

These verses describe Debbie’s faith.  I believe she had the deep assurance that God loved her, that she was precious to God; and that whatever adversity confronted her, she would face it without fear.

Years ago when I was working on this text, one of my teachers said, “The words of this text are the same words that a parent says to a child at night.  When the child cries out in the night, the parent enters the child’s room, and in essence says, “Don’t be afraid.  I’m here.  It’s alright.”

And the child is comforted.  That reminds me of the story of the little four year-old whose parents brought home a newborn baby sister.  The little boy slipped into the baby’s room, leaned over and said, “Sister, you just came from God, and it’s been a long time since I came from God.  What was it like for you with God?”  Isaiah 43 is the answer to that question.  God says, “Don’t be afraid.  I’m here. You are precious to me.  I love you.”

There’s a Jewish legend about the origin of the soul in a child. The legend that says that just before God puts a soul into the body, that soul is asked to forget its life before birth.  So, just as the soul enters the body of a baby, one of God’s angels presses the baby’s mouth shut, as a gesture, telling the baby that during its earthly life, she/he is to remain silent about its divine origins.  According to the legend, the little crevice that we all have below our nose is the imprint of the angel’s forefinger, sealing your lips.  That’s why, when you’re trying to remember something, during your ponderings, your own forefinger may spontaneously rise and rest in that little crevice. (Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing, p. 16)

Our soul—the deepest part of us—is connected to God.  We are rooted and grounded in God’s love. God says to all of us (listen up, high school grads):  “You are unique, unprecedented, priceless, precious.” (Abraham Heschel)   Our job is be aware—to expand and deepen our awareness of God’s astounding and relentless love.  Faith means anchoring ourselves in that love.  As Bill Coffin says, “Faith is being seized by love.”

Faith leads to fearlessness. One of the central admonitions in the Bible is “Fear not.”  Over and over, those words appear.  At Jesus’ birth, the angels said, “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.”  Jesus said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is God’s pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”  Our job is to deepen our faith in God, so we can move from loveless fear to fearless love.

In earlier generations there was a motto that could be found in the homes of devout people, and these words also need to be in our hearts—as they were in the heart of Debbie Sugg:

          Fear knocked at the door.

          Faith answered.

          There was no one there.

Amen.

A LITTLE LOWER THAN GOD

Psalm 8

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

May 30, 2010

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?   Yet you have made them a little lower than God…  Psalm 8:3-5

We all go through various in-between times in our life, transition times.  We’re moving from high school to college, from college to grad school or work, from one city to another, from one job to another job (if there is one), from a time of busyness to a summer season with a slower pace.

Someone said that going through a transition is like walking down a long, dim corridor.  We’ve left one room, and now we’re in the hallway trying to find the next door we will walk through.  (Last week I attended our son’s college graduation, so I’ve been thinking about that long hallway that all recent graduates are now walking.)

 In transition times, we go through an ending and a beginning, with both grief and possibility.  Do you remember what Adam said to Eve when they left the Garden of Eden?  Adam said, “My dear, we live in times of transition.”  That remark didn’t make it into the Bible, but we’re pretty sure that’s what he said.

Transitions can bring on restlessness and uneasiness.  The Scripture describes this condition with words like hunger and thirst, longing and yearning.  We’re reaching for something more.  We’re searching to overcome a feeling of dissatisfaction and restlessness. 

And we bring all this to worship.  The Spirit prompts us to confront our transition anxiety and restlessness.  If we’re listening to our life, we may find that our restlessness becomes a prompter, giving us a wake-up call, pointing us toward some new direction.  But we must cooperate with the prompting and assist the newness as it’s pushing up, like the first flower in your garden.

Whatever our personal situation, we show up here bringing our restlessness with us.  We are the “young and the restless” —and the middle aged and restless and the chronologically advantaged and restless.  In transition times our restlessness can intensify.

Freud said that the two major realities are love and work.  When we’re bothered by either love or work, we begin to feel out of balance, anxious, restless.  And we may hear somebody say, “You know, he’s going through a restless time.”  Or, “she’s just a restless soul.”

When we’re going through any transition, it’s time to read Psalm 8.  When we’re feeling lonely, downcast, or restless, listen to these words:  “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the starts that you have established:  What are human beings—who am I—that you are mindful of us, that you care for me?”

The person in transition asks these questions.  I’m such a tiny person.  And the universe is so vast.  We now know, through the Hubble telescope, that we have more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe, and each galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars.  It’s a staggering number!  “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars….”  We are a part of one galaxy among 100 billion galaxies in the universe.  We occupy a very tiny place in the heavens.  Against this vast backdrop, who are we, God, that you are mindful of us?  Are we more than a tiny speck?  Do I matter?  Can I make a difference?

Psalm 8 tells us that God has made us “a little lower than God.”  Another staggering reality!  God has made us in God’s own image.  God gives us significant being.  In one of Woody Allen’s old comedy monologues, he said someone asked him, “Why do you always act like God?”  He answered, “Well, I have to pattern myself after somebody.”)

God has made us in God’s image, the psalmist says, and then echoes Genesis—God gives us dominion over the creatures.  The psalmist is agog with wonder and shouts: “O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

If in our transition season we’ve forgotten about wonder and awe, it helps to remember that the book of Genesis says that, at the creation of the cosmos, God breathed into us the breath of life.  And as the King James Version says, “man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7, KJV)

That word “soul” can cause us to wake up and listen.  Pay attention to our language.  We say, “These words stirred my soul.”  Or “That music feeds my soul.”  We sometimes may think that we have a soul, a spiritual core.  But it’s more accurate to say that we are a soul.  Ronald Rolheiser says that soul is the life force within every person.  The soul is the energy that drives us.  If we speak of “soul music,” we don’t mean the muzak that plays in the background in shops or airports or grocery stores.  Soul music is full of energy, eros—and all the things that eros carries:  desire, nostalgia, longing, hope.  It is soul that gives energy to our music and to our lives.

But soul is also the adhesive that holds us together, especially in the transition times.  Soul is the force of integration that helps us “keep it together” and give us a sense of wholeness. If we speak of losing our soul, we mean that we’re coming apart, unglued, falling apart.

A healthy soul does two things for us.  First, it puts fire in our veins, keeps us energized, living with zest.  But secondly, a healthy soul keeps us fixed together, integrated, feeling “together,” at peace with who we are.  In religious terms, these two functions have been symbolized by fire and water.  Fire symbolizes energy, passion, vitality.  Water symbolizes a cooling down, holding in a structured container, keeping us “together.”  (See Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing)

In transition times, we long for both energy and integration.   Where do we find it?  We find it in communion with the Holy One.  We find our anchor and our energy in silence.  “Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear.”

Clarity comes from intentional connection with our soul, which we can also call our True Self.  This is the self God created us to be—the self that is “a little lower than God.”

The great gift the psalmist offers us is the truth is that we are already united with God.  Our great issue is to wake up and be aware of this reality and to nurture our union with God.  When we live only from our external, social self, we easily become depleted and anxious.  But when we deepen our spiritual practice—silence, we center ourselves in our deep self, our soul-self, the Christ-self.

Church in the best sense—the Body of Christ—is a community of people who know who we are.  We are connected with our soul, and living and acting from this self God made us to be.

There is an old fable about a mother tiger who died giving birth to a cub.  This meant that the newly born tiger cub was without any support as he wandered through the forest.  A herd of goats came upon the little tiger; and sensing that he was lost, the goats invited the cub to join their company.  As the months went by, this creature gradually took on all the qualities of a goat, even though he was by nature a tiger.

One day the king tiger, happening through the forest, saw the tiger cub acting like a silly goat, and he roared out, “What is the meaning of this unseemly masquerade?  Why are you behaving like a goat?”  All the cub knew was to bleat nervously and nibble the grass.  Then it dawned on the king tiger what the problem was.  This little creature had no idea who he was.

The older tiger took the little one down to a river and let him see for the first time a reflection of his face in the water.  “See,” the king tiger said.  “You are not really a goat, you are one of us.”  Then he laid back his head and let the little creature hear how a tiger was supposed to sound.  At that point, the king tiger said, “Follow me, little one, and I will help you become the grand thing you already have it in you to be!”

It was this fable that inspired the poet T.S. Eliot to refer to “Christ, the Tiger.”  We begin to see the connection.  Jesus came to embody all that God intended human beings to be.  Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will show you who you are, so that you can become the “grand thing that you are.”  (from John Claypool, Stories Jesus Still Tells, pp. 153-4)

We are made to live from the deep self, the self that is “a little lower than God.”   Many of us may be living now in transition times.  In one way or another, all of us are going through some kind of transition.  This is an ideal time to remember the truth of Psalm 8, which offers us “food for the soul.”  This is who you are—you are made “a little lower than God.”  That means we’re made in God’s image.  We are made to reflect God’s character—gracious, merciful, and abounding in steadfast love.

So may it be, especially in our times of transition.  Amen.

HOME CHURCH

Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 15:1-12

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

May 16, 2010 (GREAT DAY)

“Abide in me as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me…I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…”   (John 15:4-5a)

This is a GREAT DAY at Watts Street Baptist Church!  It’s a GREAT DAY because at the conclusion of the service we will be welcoming perhaps a dozen people who’ve decided to join this church. It’s a great day to welcome them.  And we’ll also be telling them “Thank God you are here.”

We might also ask these newcomers some questions, like:  What brings you here?   What are you looking for in a church?  Someone has said that when you join a congregation, you can then make a claim on the group, and the group can make a claim on you.  It’s a mutual commitment, a mutual covenant, where there are privileges and responsibilities.  At the outset I want to say to the newcomers and to all of us:  Today you are joining a community of folks who, I believe, want to be church in the best sense of the word.

What do I mean?  What brings any of us here?  We could say that we come here primarily to support an institution.  The church is an organization; it’s an institution that serves a vital purpose.  This church is an instrument for doing good, and we want this church to remain strong into the future.  So, we ask all of us to support the church with our money, talents, and energy.  That’s part of the reason we’re all here.  But I mean more than this when I say we want to be church in the best sense of the word. 

What brings us here?  We could say that we come here to study the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, applying them to the great moral issues of the day—gun violence, death penalty, the environment, poverty, war.  All these are important, and we discuss these at various times.  We have mission groups seeking to address an array of needs—Habitat for Humanity, Walltown, Peace and Reconciliation, Environmental Mission, AIDS mission, El Salvador mission (where we have a sister church) and a similar sister church in Kostroma, Russia.  We need to keep doing all these missions.  Why?  Because Jesus told us to do it, and we are his followers.  Working for peace and justice is crucial; but that is not the central reason that brings us here. 

Supporting the institution, doing Jesus/ work of justice and peace—these are very important.  But they are not our primary call.  Our first work, our primary call is not to be a strong institution.  Our first call is not to bring justice and peace.  Our primary call is not to alleviate the plight of the poor.  Our first work is to be a people, to be the people of God.  (from Gordon Cosby)

Out of our life as a people will come the call to specific missions, including keeping this institution vital into the future.  But none of this can happen unless we first attend to being God’s people.  That means that our primary call—what really brings us here—is to spend time with God, to stay close to God, close to Jesus, and close to each other.  That’s why our first job is to show up, to be here, to be connected to God, to Jesus, and this community.

This is what Jesus meant when he used the word “abide.”  “If you abide in me and I in you, then you will bear fruit.”  That word “abide” is not exactly in vogue now.  But it’s used more than 40 times in John’s Gospel.   According to Webster, the word “abide” means “to dwell, stay, tarry, remain.”  If you love me, Jesus said, abide with me.

The word abide means at least two things.  First, it means a place, to have a place, an abiding place.  Some years ago I talked with an 80 year old wife and husband.  They had no children.  Both had severe health problems.  They had reached a point that they had to leave their homeplace of 40 years.  They were anxious.  Their sense of place was threatened.  Where now is their place, their abiding place?

All of us long for a place, a sense of place.  In the Bible people were nomadic, transient, always looking for a place.  A promised land, a city, a place to call our own.  Today there are so many people who are displaced—refugees, immigrants, homeless people, those in prisons, those in care facilities. Many people are searching for a place.  We all long for a place— where we belong, where we can “abide,” where we have identity and community.

What brings us here?  We all need a place, a place to be, to belong, to feel connected.   We may say we’re looking for a home church.  A rabbi was once asked, “What is your favorite word for God.”  Without hesitation, he said, “My favorite word for God is ‘The Place.’”  God is the place—a garden, a mountain, a temple, a land, a church (God’s house)—where we abide.

What brings us here?  We need an abiding place, where we deepen our connectedness to Jesus and Jesus’ people.  We’re all like branches connected to the vine.  Abide in me, Jesus said.

And that takes us to a second meaning of “abide.”  When we abide with Jesus and Jesus’ people, we have a relationship of trust and love.  Not authority or status or role, but a relationship where each person commits to sustain and nourish and encourage each other. 

Abide:  This is not a relationship where we find fault with each other.  No looking for the flaw in the other. No blaming.  No holding grudges.  Of course, we hurt each other.  At times we create distance.  But forgiveness is central here; we are forgiven into this community. We hear that forgiveness every Sunday.  That’s why we keep showing up, coming back.  Home is the place where we keep coming back.   Robert Frost said it:  “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Someone once referred to this church as a wildlife refuge.   I like that image.   We are a collection of wild and wonderful people.  We are diverse, and diversity is a great strength.  Some of us are restless, and some are intense.  Some of us are quiet, and some are free spirits, and some of us can be cantankerous.  But with all this diversity, we’ve been able to be home for each other.  How can all this wild life stay together?  We celebrate our differences and affirm what we have in common.

What we have in common is far stronger than all our differences.  What do we have in common?  1. Jesus is Lord, 2. our common humanity, and our 3. covenant as God’s people.

At the end of this service we will re-affirm our church covenant.  This is our identity statement; it’s a short theological statement, with a longer list of actions.  We make covenant with each other because God has made covenant with us.   God abides with us in a covenant relationship:  “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

When we lose our way, God comes to find us.  When we complain and criticize, God comes to woo us and love us and forgive us back to health.  It is from God that we learn how to make covenant.  It’s a vow, a promise, much like the promises and vows we make in any committed covenant relationship.  We promise to be there for each other, no matter what happens.

If we ever catch the reality of “abiding,” as Jesus meant it, we’ll find home—both the place and the relationship.

Isn’t that what we all long for in a church?   A home base, a nurturing place.  A place to belong, an abiding place.  One of the finest names for a church I know is on the door of the church in Winston-Salem:  “Home Moravian Church.”  Jesus offers us home:  If you abide in me, find your home in me, you will bear fruit.  You will be doing justice, alleviating poverty, and working to heal the wounds of those around us. 

There is no finer gift than the gift of a church home—where we are loved, accepted, nurtured. That nurture is the basis for our mission in the world.

The most famous homecoming story in the Bible is the return of the Prodigal Son. It’s really a story of the prodigal father, since the word “prodigal” means lavish, generous.  The father in the story understands what it means to “abide.”  When the son returns home, the father cannot wait to run out and embrace the boy.  Welcome home—to place and relationship.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every Sunday, coming to church was a sort of weekly prodigal homecoming?  What if, as we approach this church each Sunday, we see in our mind’s eye at a distance, standing on the steps, a glorious father or mother figure, waiting to run out to us to embrace us and forgive us for our weekly misdeeds?  (Bill Coffin)  No matter what we do, however we mess up, we have a home here, an abiding place.

Then our worship is indeed a celebration of grace, a time of thanksgiving for the gift of home.  Home church.

It’s a Great Day to be here.  Welcome home!

JESUS AND HIS MOTHER

Luke 2: 41-52

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

May 9, 2010 (Mother’s Day)

Today on Mother’s Day, we would do well to remember the old Jewish proverb:  “God could not be everywhere, and therefore God made mothers.”

Today as we give thanks for our mothers, I of course remember my own dear mom who died in February.  This past Christmas Day we were all gathered with her.  I turned and said with some enthusiasm, “Mother, we wouldn’t be here with you!”  Not missing a beat, she said, “I’m glad you figured that out.”

Jesus would not have been here without his mother.  It seems appropriate today that we reflect together about Jesus’ relationship with his mother, Mary.  I thank Bill Coffin, my chaplain during my years in divinity school, for pointing me to this focus. 

Mary and Jesus did not have the usual mother-son relationship.  From what we know about Jesus, we can assume that he had a rather typical childhood in a good Jewish home.  He learned the Scriptures, worked with his father in his carpenter’s shop, and minded his mother.

Jesus clearly loved his mother, but he also had his times of conflict with her.  Today I want to look at three incidents that give us some insight into their relationship. The first is the incident in the temple when Jesus was 12 years old.  Mary and Joseph were leaving the Passover celebration, and they lost their son.  Any parent knows the terrifying awful panic that comes over you when you lose your child for even 5 minutes.  But Mary and Joseph couldn’t find Jesus for three days.  (If that happened today, we’d not only be hysterical; we would have police, highway patrol, FBI, and a church member search party looking everywhere.)

When they at last found Jesus, Mary’s response is restrained.  The account of her reaction seems mild.  “Son, why have you treated us like this?  Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.”  I’m not sure I could be so gentle with a kid who’s been gone for three days!

Jesus’ response here shows that he has a rather amazing, independent spirit.  We might expect a 12-year old to stand in front of his parents, looking at the ground, feeling guilty.  Not Jesus. There’s a kind of sadness in his voice:  “Did you now know…that I must be about my Father’s business?”

“It’s as if Jesus is saying, ‘I have been with you for 12 years, and you haven’t noticed anything different or special about me?’”  Have you noticed ‘how I love to read and argue about the Scriptures?  Have you forgotten that I have a heavenly as well as an earthly father?’  It’s as if Jesus is saying to Mary, ‘I’m a loaned treasure, Mom.  I’m happy to be on loan to you, but I belong to God, who has in mind for me things beyond any you could dream of.’”  (from William S. Coffin, Jr., a sermon from Riverside Church, May 8, 1983)

It seems clear that Mary was having trouble understanding her unusual son; but at least, she kept an open mind and a reflective spirit.  As Luke said about Mary, “She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

The second incident occurs about 18 years later.  Jesus is now thirty and beginning his active ministry.  There is no record of Jesus’ life between age 12 and 30. These have been called “the lost years.”  We can only imagine that Jesus went through the usual developmental process of teen years and young adulthood.   This second incident is found at the end of Matthew 12.  “While he was still speaking to the people, behold his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him.  But when the man came and told him they were outside, Jesus said, ‘Who is my mother?  And who are my brothers?’  And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and brothers, for whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.”

Now if I had been Jesus’ mother, I would have heard these words with some distress.  The words seem icy and harsh.  There is some tension hovering around the words.  And why did Mary and the brothers stand outside?  Why did they call him out rather than going inside to listen to him? 

We know that the scribes and Pharisees are after Jesus.  From the Gospel of John we know that Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in him.  They probably thought he was “beside himself,” as Mark puts it.  We’d say “crazy” or “out of touch with reality,” or “socially maladjusted.”  Jesus knew that they were not open to what he had to say.  They had come to try to persuade him to come home and stop this wild-eyed, radical preaching.  And Mary probably wanted to remind Jesus of the backlog of carpentry orders at the shop in Nazareth.

Your heart has to go out to Mary.  (Coffin)   She is both embarrassed and confused about her son.  She keeps hearing terrible things about him.  We can imagine that she is saying, “Why don’t you come home and settle down and act like a son is supposed to act.”  Bill Coffin remarks that “If Jesus had done what his mother wanted, he would have probably become the best carpenter in Nazareth, instead of saving the world.”

But giving in to what his mother wanted was not the answer.  Here then is the familiar conflict of two visions—the will of the heavenly parent versus the will of the earthly parent.   (When I was in college, exploring whether to become a minister, one of my professors said, “Some people can’t figure out if it’s God calling them or their mother.”)  It seems certain that Jesus had the volume turned up on God’s call and the volume turned down on his mother’s call to come home.

The story is clear that if any of us take seriously our mission from God, that mission will likely run into tension with a mother who is trying to be protective.  Mary probably wanted to protect both herself and her son.  “Don’t take such crazy risks.  Play it safe.”  But if any of us are to develop fully, we must differentiate ourselves from our parents.  We have to push against the protective mother—or father.  We may call it “individuation”—becoming your own person.

Perhaps this is the only way to understand those statements of Jesus that sound so cruel to his mother.  At the wedding at Cana Jesus spoke sharply to his mother:  “Woman, what have you to do with me?”  He’s pushing her away.  And remember that he said, “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.”  And notice the sadness in his voice when he says, “A man’s enemies will be those in his own household.”

Jesus understood family tensions.  He lived that tension with his mother.  How does he remain true to his calling and show love for his mother—and family—at the same time?  Not without tension and misunderstanding.  Jesus has a new vision.  He is repeatedly trying to broaden the understanding of family.  His mission is not to a narrow, blood family.  He is not concerned with a closed, clannish family identity.  He is always pushing the boundaries of family out, out, broadening the circle.  “Whoever does the will of God is my mother and my sister and my brother.”

The final scene between Jesus and his mother occurs at the cross.  Mary is there in what must have been agonizing distress.  Here, finally, Jesus seems to resolve the conflict with his mother.

From the cross Jesus looks at his mother, and he is remarkably tender and loving.  “Mother, here is your son.”  He refers to John, his beloved disciple, who is standing there.  “Son, here is your mother.”  In his final moments of agony, Jesus is focused on his mother.  It is likely that Mary is a widow now, and he is providing for her economic well-being, linking her with John, his disciple.  But more than that, he is now including his mother in his larger understanding of family.  By urging her to go with one of his disciples, he is caring for her spiritual well-being, and he is including her in his mission.

I wonder where Mary’s other children were—those who had been with her that day trying to persuade Jesus to come home.  Perhaps they were still in Nazareth, shaking their heads and muttering insults about their crazy brother and how much trouble he has caused them.  But not Mary.  (Coffin)  She was suspicious at first.  She was doubtful in the middle, but at the end she is with him.  She is fully present with him, weeping for him; but she is also standing by his cross with the full courage of a loving, faithful mother.

Jesus and his mother are finally together in love and vision.  But notice that Jesus is not the least protective of his mother.  He doesn’t say, “Take her away.  This is no sight for a mother’s eyes.”  No, Mary has to suffer his sufferings and to translate them into the pangs of birth for a new and larger family.  Now she will be mother to John, and she also becomes Mother Mary for millions of others who will call her name in different languages.  She is Mother because we are all sisters and brothers in Christ.

All of us are born of God and born of woman.  Each of us is member of a blood family, but also of the larger, human family.  And the whole human family desperately needs the tender love we finally see between Mary and Jesus, mother and son.  Their love moves through tension and conflict and pain.  Then their love moves out, in a wider circle, to embrace all human beings as sisters and brothers—one family, God’s family.

So may it be.  Amen.

This sermon owes much to Williams Sloane Coffin, Jr., “Mary and Jesus,” in The Collected Sermons, The Riverside Years, volume 2.

THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE

John 13:31-35

a homily by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

May 2, 2010

Years ago in my first year as a minister, I taught a Sunday school class of five year olds.  I decided to talk with the children about God, so I asked them to give me a word to finish the sentence “God is…”   I thought surely they would respond with a word they’d learned at the dinner table:  “God is great.  God is good.”  Or if I said “God is...,” they might say “God is love.” They didn’t say any of those words.  Suddenly one little fellow named Matthew waved his hand and said with great enthusiasm “magic!  God is magic!”

I had expected the children to say “God is love,” but to a 5 year-old, God’s love may be a lot like magic.  And to all of us, when our hearts are open, God’s love may seem like magic.  It comes upon us in a mysterious and magical way.  Love, like faith, is caught more than taught.  And when we “catch it,” it may seem like magic!

The apostle Paul wrote the famous words “And now abides faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  Paul is echoing Jesus who gives us a commandment:  love one another.  “People will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” 

What Jesus and Paul are telling us is that love is the core value, the central value of life.  Love is the heart of the matter.  But how can we talk about love without drifting into sentimentality and fluff?

Some people might look at Paul’s famous words about faith, hope and love and say that faith is the main point, the central value.  But faith can easily be interpreted as right belief.  Then faith can get reduced to right doctrine.  If you believe the right set of doctrines, then you’ve got faith.  That’s a misunderstanding of faith. 

Some might say that faith is certainty, but certainty is not faith.  If it were, we could say that right belief is the central requirement of religious life, and the result would be an exclusive club—we hang out with the right people with the right beliefs on the “religious right.”  But Jesus was not exclusive.

Some may try to make hope the main point.  But hope is not an isolated reality.  Hope is an abiding trust, and it grows from love and faith.  Bill Coffin said, “Faith is being seized by love.”  Love puts us on the road of faith, and hope keeps us there.  Hope is a deep trust in God’s strength that keeps us steady and stable when the road gets rocky.

Love is the foundation from which both faith and hope emerge.  If God is love, and we are made in God’s image, then we are made for love.  We are like God when we love.  That means our search for God is a search for love.  The search for love is a search for God.  God takes the initiative in coming after us.  God is like the prodigal father waiting for the son to come home from the far country.  God is like a loving mother, welcoming her child with outstretched arms. 

If we are all God’s children, then God loves each of us fiercely—like a doting father or mother.

Doting parents can sometimes make fools of themselves to express their love.  They may talk in expansive words:  “I love you high as the sky, deep as the ocean….I love you 29 million and a whole lot more.”  When we parents say these exaggerated words, we may catch a glimpse of what it must be like for God, who loves us so much that God gets carried away telling us, showing us.  We say it every time we dedicate a baby by walking them down the center aisle of this church:  “Little child, today we want you to know that God loves you.  It was for you that God created the world—the sun, moon, and stars.  It was for you that God sent Jesus.  It was for you that God sent this congregation to nurture you and your parents to love you.  We want you to know, before you ever understand it, that God’s grace and love is given to you.”   God is madly in love with you!

God has modeled love for us.  We love because God first loved us.  But how do we overcome our self-centeredness and isolation to reach out in love.  I think this love may start with the realization that we are all connected.  We are all created to love one another.

Thomas Merton lived much of his life as a monk at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky.  Here Merton prayed, taught, and wrote about his search for God.  In one of his memorable experiences, he tells of going into Louisville, where he had a revelation. He describes it this way:  “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.  It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.  The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.  (from A Thomas Merton Reader, p. 345)

Merton was seized by love there at the corner of Fourth and Walnut.  He got the point—or the Point got him.  Love is what really matters. Love is not a suggestion; it’s a commandment.  To obey a commandment, we need to develop a habit—the habit of love.

To develop a habit, we stop doing some things in order to start doing others.  We stop acting in unloving ways.  Stop being excessively angry, critical, or indifferent—as a first step to being loving.  Our first task then is to release whatever blocks us from loving—fear, anger, hatred.  Life is too short to let those blocks prevent us from loving.  God is in the business of freeing us from whatever blocks us from love

Once we are freed from the blocks inside us, then our love energy can be released.  We are freed to reach out and open ourselves to each other, to risk being in relationship. We can’t deeply love someone until we have spent time with them.  So a key step in learning love is to spend time with people, especially those who may be different from us.

Someone suggested that we each need to intentionally develop a relationship with one person who is very different from us—someone from a different economic class, a homeless person, someone from another country, an undocumented immigrant, or a person with a different sexual orientation.  Spend time together.  Waste some time together.  Knowing and being known can lead to loving and being loved.

A few years ago our youth group went to help with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.  They returned after a week of hard work, helping to re-build several homes.  One of the adult leaders on the trip said, “I think every person here had an experience of common humanity with people different from them.”  They connected across differences and found common ground in common humanity. 

Likewise in El Salvador a few summers ago our mission team came back from spending time with people we could call “dirt poor.” And they told of a lady who said to them, “I don’t have things to give you.  All I have to give you is my love.” 

She got the point.  She spoke the gospel.

AMEN.

“Made in the Image of a Gardener”

An Earth Day Sermon by Sarah Jobe

April 25, 2010

On Genesis 1:24-31, Psalm 104, and Romans 8:18-23

This week marks the 40^th anniversary of earth day. Forty years of taking time to reflect on our own actions and how they affect the world around us. And I’m glad I go to church that takes time for “earth Sunday.” I count myself lucky to have found a church with an Environmental Missions committee and a pastor who, at least once every July, preaches a sermon on growing and eating fresh garden tomatoes.

And yet even, or maybe especially, at a church like this, it is easy to understand active care for God’s creation as one of many ways to serve God faithfully. I’m glad that Laura Webb Smith cares for the environment, but I myself prefer to cook for IHN, or build with Habitat, or teach Sunday School. After all, we can’t do everything.

But today’s text suggests that care for creation is at the very heart of who we are created to be. When God imagined humans, God imagined them ruling over creation. As if to make sure we don’t miss it, the Bible repeats it twice.        

Read Genesis 1: 26 and 28

It is God’s first command to us, the first word spoken to human beings: Rule over my earth.

Perhaps you’re thinking “ruling over” and “caring for” are not quite the same thing. Indeed, they are not. The two words used here for “subdue” and “rule over” are harsh words. When humans undertake them in Scripture they can mean to violate, to tread upon, and even to rape.

Sadly enough, Christians through the centuries have noticed this and used it as divine mandate to use and misuse the earth for their own gain.  And while we are not the type of church to ever be heard repeating such an interpretation, we are all guilty of such misuse. We are all guilty of a ruling that looks like treading underfoot.

Choosing the speed and comfort of a car over walking, biking or busing

Choosing the speed and ease of fast food over cooking and growing

Choosing plastic, disposable containers over carrying reusable plates, cups, and bags around with us

“Creation has been subjected to futility, not be her own choice, the will of the one who subjected her”: Romans 8 nails it on the head.

But “rule” is not the only thing repeated in Gen 1. The command to rule is paired both times with God’s intent to create us in God’s own image. Hear the words again:         

Read Gen 1:26-28

It is as if ruling over creation is the very content of what it means to be the image of God. Indeed, God’s care for creation is all we know of God thus far. God attends to the earth and sky, land and sea, sun, moon, and stars. God sets a place for every animal, bird and fish. In the next chapter God will plant a garden and hand it over to Adam and Eve to tend.

We are made in the image of a Gardening God and to know how to rule God’s creation rightly, we must look to God as our model.

This morning I’d like to highlight three ways that our texts suggest we might model our behavior after the Gardener in whose image we are created.

1. We must learn to see creation as God sees it: alive, active, worth employing and lavishing attention on.

There’s a weird way in the Bible that creation takes on almost human characteristics

Read Romans 8:18-23

Creation groans and suffers under our rule

Creation waits eagerly for a new kind of rule…for the children of God to be revealed,

Creation hopes for liberation from bondage to decay

Creation is not an inanimate object, but a vibrant, active being waiting to be “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” right alongside us.

We get the same sense of creation in Psalm 104. The Psalm begins by listing the functions of the light, water, and clouds, and culminates in v.4 with this phrase:

He makes the winds his messengers,

Flames of fire his servant.

We like to think of ourselves as God’s messengers and servants, but God hands out these vocations to the wind and flame as well. When we sit atop a mountain after a long hike and feel the wind whip around us and breathe deeply the crisp, fresh air, and feel deep in our lungs the glory of God, we are experiencing the truth that God has made the winds his messengers.

In God’s eyes, the earth, water, sun, moon, and trees are more like us than we like to think. And God wants us to see and acknowledge the similarities.

I have made much of the repetition in Genesis 1, and it is worth noticing that in the second telling, God adds three verbs, three verbs that I have come to see as counterweights, balances or checks upon our ruling. The first one is most often translated “be fruitful” but is simply the verb form of the word fruit. It would just as well be translated “be fruity” or “be like fruit.” See the way that you are like fruit and fruit is like you.

Learning to rule like God the Gardener means learning to look at our subjects as if they were ourselves. To treat the earth as we would have the earth treat us. There is an ominous warning in Jeremiah 33, a threat that mirrors the blessing of Genesis in which God declares that if we get our ruling wrong, God will hand our bodies over as food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. Our treatment of the birds and beasts should reflect that we take this threat seriously.

1. Learn to live with limits

Much of Psalm 104 is God setting everything in place.

At the sound of God’s voice the waters flow over the mountains, down into the valleys, to the place God assigned for them. “You set a boundary they cannot cross” declares the Psalmist.

God sets a home for each bird and animal, the birds nesting beside the stream, the high mountain being reserved for the wild goat, and the crags for the badgers. The sun knows when it is time to set, and the animals know when to go out and when to lie down by the setting and rising of the sun.

This part of the Psalm, in which God sets everything in order, giving each creature a set time and a bounded place, culminates with this line “And man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening.”

The Green Bible leaves this line black. Almost the entire Psalm is green, but this line is left out. And yet our learning to accept limits is at the heart of care for creation. Letting the nightfall act as a daily check to our producing and consuming, turning off our lights, can be a daily reminder that what we have and what we’ve done is enough.

Americans are 5% of the world’s population, but we use 24% of the world’s energy. We work through the night in whatever location will produce the most profit. Learning to limit our production and consumption would indeed have significant impact on Green House Gas emission.

The second check in Genesis is often translated “and multiply” “be fruitful; and multiply” but it comes from the root “ravu” which means “to be enough.” “Be like fruit and be enough.”

Learning, at each dusk, that what we’ve done and what we have is enough is a spiritual discipline at the heart of ruling creation well.

1. Finally, if earth is to be satisfied by the work of our hands, if creation is to be liberated by our actions, we must adopt daily practices that move in that direction

Both Gen 1 and Psalm 104 suggest that vegetarianism might be one practice to adopt. In Gen 1:29 God says, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit in it. These will be yours for food.”

In Psalm 104, when God is passing out food, God gives “plants for humans to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens the heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to sustain the heart.”

The Bible certainly depicts people eating meat, and I do remember that just last week Jesus shared a breakfast of fish with his disciples, but in all of its utopic visions, the Bible imagines us eating plants. Ellen Davis has argued that all of the sacrificial system is about limiting meat consumption, acknowledgement of the holiness of the life being taken, and practice of humane slaughter techniques.

40% of the world’s grain is fed to livestock. Eating one serving of beef uses the same amount of the energy as driving around in your car for an hour while leaving all the lights on back home.

At the very least, we might think of changing our eating habits when it comes to meat—saving it for special occasions, buying meat that has been raised and slaughtered in such a way that acknowledges the value of the life being offered for our own.

You have a commitment card in your bulletin today. Each of you is being asked to think of one commitment you can make in your daily life to get a little closer to ruling the earth as God would have you rule it. You might commit to plant a garden, as God did and envisioned us to do. You might commit to walk, ride, or bus instead of driving your own car.

As Dan and I did the Lenten booklet put out by Environmental Missions, I found myself challenged to new practices and reminded of practices that I’d let slip. I have made a renewed commitment to using my laundry line over the dryer and to bringing cloth bags with me to the store.

The third check in Genesis is often translated “fill” “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.” But the verb mala has a much richer range of meaning. It means to “replenish, satisfy or consecrate.” To consecrate the earth…it is a priestly function and we have been given the priestly position of standing between God and her creation. We have been given a holy task—the work of caring for the creation God lovingly birthed. It is almost unimaginable that God would turn over the sun, moon, and stars, the water and earth, the fish, birds, and animals to our care. But God does:

Be like fruit. Be enough. Replenish, satisfy, consecrate the earth, and rule as if you were made in the image of a Gardener.

So may it be. Amen.

“Time to Feed the Sheep”

A Homily by Kelly Sasser

April 18, 2010

Watts Street Baptist Church

John 21:15-17

15When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.

It was the ultimate teachable moment.  To be certain, the disciples had to be completely overwhelmed.  First, they had seen Jesus, alive and calling out to them from the shore.  Then they had hauled in this miraculous catch of fish.  And now they were enjoying the most incredible breakfast buffet on the beach with the risen Lord.

But after all this excitement and with everyone sitting back and patting their tummies in sublime satisfaction, Jesus turns to Simon Peter and reveals the real purpose of his visit. 

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

I imagine that Peter laughed and responded heartily, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”  After all, Peter had always been the natural leader and spokesperson for the disciples.

“Simon, son of John, do you truly love me?”

I now imagine that Peter finds Jesus repeating the question a bit curious.  “Maybe he didn’t hear me the first time.  And why is he calling me by my old name, Simon?”  “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”

“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

And now it hits Peter like a ton of bricks.  Three times he had denied Jesus before the crucifixion.  Three times he had betrayed Jesus and said he never even knew the man.  And now, here was Jesus, asking three times, “Do you love me?”  The painful memories of Peter’s failures flooded back.  He cries out, “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.”

And perhaps only then, did Peter truly hear what Jesus said to him after each question, “Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep”.

New Testament Greek scholars have long been fascinated by the use of the different Greek words for love.  The traditional teaching is that eros is used to describe a passionate, romantic love between two people.  Phileo is often translated as a love between friends, family, or community.  (We call Phila-delphia “the city of brotherly love”).  Agape love, however, has been used to describe a deeper, truer, sacrificial love.  The divine love that God has for the world described in John 3:16.

In reality, the meanings of these Greek words are not so cleanly defined and some scholars point out that in the Gospel of John, the words phileo and agape are sometimes used interchangeably.  However, when you look closely at this text, there is something extremely curious about the words for love that Jesus and Peter use.

When Jesus first asks Peter, “do you love me?”, he uses the word agape.  “Simon, son of John, do you love me with a deep, sacrificial love?” 

Peter responds in the affirmative…but instead of agape, the word he uses for love is phileo.  “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you like a brother!”  This is still a powerful form of love and an expression of true affection, but note, Peter employs a different word than what Jesus used in the question.   

The second time Jesus asks, “do you love me?”, Jesus again uses the word, agape.  And once again, Peter answers with phileo.  Is Peter doing this on purpose?  Does he misunderstand the question?  Does he just use the words interchangeably?  Is he ashamed?  Is he coming to terms with his own limitations?

And then there is the third question.  Wouldn’t it be great if Peter got it right this time?  Wouldn’t it be a nice, story-book ending if Peter redeemed himself, used the word agape, and said, “Yes, Lord, I love you with a deep, sacrificial love.  I know I failed you before but this time, I really mean it. I will even lay my life down for you!”

But we know that Peter has promised this before.  The bottom line is that he’s not capable of redeeming himself.  He needs help.

And here’s the twist: the third time the question, “do you love me?” is asked, it is actually Jesus who uses the word phileo.  And Peter responds, “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love (phileo) you.”

Instead of Peter rising up to hit one out of the park on his third try, it is Jesus who changes the pitch.  He lobs a softie he knows Peter can hit.  In yet another Easter example of true agape love, Jesus descends down to Peter’s level.  Jesus’ love for Peter is powerful and unconditional, even if Peter’s love for Jesus is fickle and has limitations.  But Jesus comes down anyway, to meet Peter where he is.

The three questions were not intended to embarrass or shame Peter.  Jesus’ goal was to redeem Peter in a way that Peter could never do himself.  Jesus’ goal was to take the fragile love that Peter did have and direct him to use that love for God’s purposes.  To commission Peter to carry on the work that Jesus had started: to build the Kingdom of God, bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to take care of the flock, to feed the sheep. 

Friends, I believe that Jesus’ message to Peter is extended to you and me.  Jesus says to each of us, “Your failures have been forgiven.  You have been redeemed.  I will rebuild your confidence and restore your name. No need to dwell on the past.  Because you have important work to do.  If you love me, feed my sheep.” 

What an amazing thought…that Jesus would call us, just as we are, past failures and current limitations, warts and all?  Some of us feel like maybe we could follow Jesus after we take care of some lingering doubts or personal struggles.  But Jesus never waited for people to “get it all figured out” or “get their act together” before he called them.  Real faith grows out of the journey of discipleship.  We learn as we go. 

No matter our age or where we are in the spectrum of faith or in our ability to articulate our love for Jesus, the call is the same:  it’s time to feed the sheep.  It’s time to care for God’s children.  It’s time to be about the business of the family of God.  It’s time to drop our nets and follow Jesus.   

So may it be.  Amen.

TOUCHING THE WOUNDS        

John 20:19-31

A sermon by Mel Williams

WattsStreet Baptist Church

April 11, 2010 (Easter 2)

“There is more faith, believe me, in honest doubt than in half the creeds.”  That statement from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (In Memoriam) sums up the approach of Thomas when he asks Jesus to let him see the scars on his hands and side.  Thomas wanted some proof that this man standing before him was indeed the same Jesus who was crucified.  Thomas must be saying, “You look like Jesus, but I won’t believe it’s you until I see your scars.”

We’ve called him “Doubting Thomas.”  But for most of us, doubt no longer shocks us.  Most of us have a healthy respect for doubt.  When newcomers are considering joining this church, I usually say “This is a place where you can think out loud what you are coming to believe.”  In other words, you can express your skepticism and your doubts, and I don’t think anyone is going to gasp in dismay over your questions— about the resurrection or the virgin birth or whether Jesus walked on water. 

But as one commentator said, the real shock is not Thomas’ doubts, but Jesus’ response— showing his wounds, the scars in his hands and side.  (See James Harnish, “Living the Word” in The Christian Century, April 6, 2010)

We often say that Jesus is Lord.  He is our life-director. He is the guide for our actions of love, compassion, and witness.  But the text for today reminds us that Jesus himself is wounded and scarred.

We might ask a child-like question:   If God raised Jesus from the dead, why didn’t God fix him up? (Barbara Lundblad)  Why didn’t God cover up those awful scars?  Why does Jesus have to show his wounds?  

Wouldn’t we rather have a perfect, unblemished super-hero Jesus?  There are times in our lives when we may have an image of Jesus as a godly Superman.  Some of us can remember hearing Superman described in the movies as “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”  In our fantasies, we can imagine Jesus with powers and abilities far beyond any other human.  Or we might even imagine Jesus being some kind of celestial being, floating down from the clouds— a spiritual being who is not subject to the sufferings of the human world.  In the early years of Christianity that was known as the Gnostic heresy— belief in a Christ whose divinity trumps his humanity; he’s a divine, spiritual being with no human wounds like the rest of us.

This is not the Jesus of the Gospels.  It’s clear in the story today that Jesus is recognized by his scars, his wounds.  Here is the fully human Jesus.

The shocking reality in this story is not Thomas’ doubt; the shock is Jesus showing his wounds.  “Touch my hands; touch my side.  Touch these wounds, and peace be with you.”  In that moment Thomas seems to overcome his doubt, and his faith is awakened.  We can surmise that the other disciples responded in a similar way.

Why would Jesus draw attention to his wounds?  The Jesus we follow is fully human.  This is one of the great gifts of Christianity.  Jesus is a suffering human being, like all of us.  The story seems to be telling us:  You will not see Jesus unless you see his wounds.”  (from Barbara Lundblad)  Somehow we need to understand that the resurrected Christ is forever the wounded Christ.  He’s brought back to life, but never all fixed up. 

Instead, Jesus is offering his wounds as a source of healing power. Jesus is, in Henri Nouwen’s phrase, “the wounded healer.” Nouwen wrote a book by that title, and his book was inspired by a story, well-known among Hebrew people.  It concerns a rabbi who came across the prophet Elijah and said to him:

“Tell me—when will the Messiah come?”
Elijah replied, “Go and ask him yourself.”
“Where is he?” said the Rabbi.
“He’s sitting at the gates of the city,” said Elijah.
“But how will I know which one is he?”

The Prophet said, “He is sitting among the poor, covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and bind them up again, but he unbinds only one at a time and binds them up again, saying to himself, “Perhaps I shall be needed; if so, I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.”  (Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, p. 84)

The story tells us that the Messiah is sitting among the poor, binding his wounds one at a time, waiting for the moment when he will be needed.  And that is true for each of us.

Henri Nouwen adds, “What I find impressive in this story are these two things: first, the faithful tending of one’s own woundedness and second, the willingness to move to the aid of other people and to make the fruits of our own woundedness available to others.” 

Why would Jesus draw attention to his wounds?  If he denied his wounds, we would be tempted to see only a glorified Christ, a heavenly being who could go through locked doors and walk on water.  But the wounded Jesus shows us something else.  The scarred Jesus doesn’t wait until he’s all fixed up.  And he doesn’t wait until we are all fixed up before he meets us.

We’ve all been wounded—physically or emotionally.  Some of us have been betrayed by one who loved us (“One of you will betray me,” Jesus said.)  Some of us have felt let down by close friends (“Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” Jesus asks his friends.)  Some of us have faced a terrible crisis and wondered if God had given up on us.  (Jesus said, “My God, why have you forsaken me.”)   Could this be the reason Jesus said, “Touch my hands and side.  Touch my wounds?”  His wounds touch the wounded places of your life and my life.

We may not have been nailed to a wooden cross; but we’ve heard people say, “This is my cross to bear.  This is the particular suffering I have to face.”  Sometimes our suffering may be hidden, and we’d rather not let people know.  Or it may be that we are suffering with a loved one struggling with Alzheimer’s disease or some terrible disability.  You may get a dreaded diagnosis of cancer; you have a child who’s sick or an aging parent facing declining health.  We usually don’t get to choose the wounds we carry.  Neither did Jesus.  But he said, “Here, touch my wounds, and peace be with you.”

Those words may be shocking, but they are also enormously comforting.  The one we call Lord suffers with us; he is one of us.  And he shows us nothing less than the heart of God.  When Bill Coffin’s 23 year old son, Alex, died when his car crashed into a river in Boston, Coffin said, “When the waves covered my son, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” 

The great issue of the resurrection is the hope that it gives us to face our wounds, our pain, with the courage of Jesus.  He suffered.  But he was willing to show us his wounds and to allow his own wounds to be a source of healing.  The question for us is whether we are willing to do the same thing.  Can we allow our wounds to teach us, so that our woundedness becomes a vehicle for our connecting with each other—and to God?

A glorified Jesus couldn’t help us.  He would be floating over our suffering.  After a visit with someone in the hospital, in the throes of a terrible depression, the patient later wrote a note that said, “Thank you for taking my pain seriously.  Thank you for not brushing aside my darkness.  You stayed with me in my pain, and that was a great comfort.”

The resurrected Jesus comes to us as a wounded healer.  He says, “Touch my wounds.”  Likewise, through our willingness to be there for each other, we—with our wounds—continue the ministry of Jesus.  This is what the church of Jesus is all about.

Through us, the wounded Jesus keeps coming to each of us.  And he says—and we say, “Peace be with you.”

Amen.  So may it be.

FROM EXISTENCE TO LIFE

John 20:1-18

A sermon by Mel Williams

Watts Street Baptist Church

April 4, 2010 (Easter)

 “This is the day the Lord has made—this resurrection day.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  Alleluia!

What’s the point of Easter?  Is it spring flowers and sunshine and birds singing?  Is it a new Easter outfit?  Is the point of Easter baskets filled with chocolate candies? Is it alleluias? (Children ring the little bells.) Is the point of Easter colored eggs and bunny rabbits

Last year on Easter morning I checked my telephone voice messages and heard a booming voice saying, “The Easter bunny did not die for your sins!  And don’t forget it!”  It will not surprise some of you that those were the words of a shy, timid, reluctant Watts Street member, Clay Chandler.

Okay, Clay, the point of Easter is not bunny rabbits.  We have many items that we associate with the cultural observance of Easter.  But these are not the point of Easter. Thank the Lord—and alleluia! (Ring the bells)

Then you might say, “Well, the point of Easter is Jesus rising from the dead.”  Is the resurrection the point of Easter?  If we took a vote now, many of us would surely vote YES—or alleluia.  And that would be right.

The line of the hymn that gets caught in my throat at Easter is “Christ the Lord is risen TODAY.”  No, no, he rose 2000 years ago.  But we sing, “Christ the Lord is risen TODAY.”  How is it that a past event can happen again today?  The biblical story is about the past becoming present.  During Lent we are not just thinking about Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness; we are—in the present moment—staying with Jesus as we place our struggles alongside his struggles.

During Holy Week we didn’t merely tell the story about Jesus’ last week; we stayed with Jesus and allowed his pain and suffering to affect us.  We participated in his suffering; and on Friday night, we sat here in total darkness as we experienced his death. 

On Easter morning we come not to hear about the resurrection, but to catch some of the resurrection spirit in us—today!  If we allow the story to connect with our lives, we begin to ask, “Is it possible for me to be resurrected?  Can I move from a feeling of deadness—flat existence—to a new vitality, a new aliveness?

When we ask these questions, we are getting closer to the point of Easter.  When we sing “Christ the Lord is risen TODAY,” we mean not two thousand years ago, but TODAY.  How could Jesus be risen TODAY except as he is risen in us! Jesus said, “I’ve come that you may have life—abundant life.” (John 10:10)  He has given his spirit of newness, his aliveness to us—if we are willing to allow his spirit to infuse us, to take us over—today.

I submit that the point of Easter is TODAY.  Christ is alive—today, in you, in me. 

The point of Easter is you and me!  Christ is risen, yes.  But the point of the resurrection is that you too can be brought back to life.  You too can be made alive again.  The truth of this day is:  Life begins at Easter! In the face of death and despair, our God always brings life and hope.  That’s worth a few alleluias.

Someone said, “God’s name is ‘I am doing a new thing.’”  That new thing is life—new life, aliveness.  There is existence, and there is life.  Existence is flat, monotonous, dreary, and dreadful.  We have to break out of existence and into life.  Existence is terribly limited, but in life there is no limit.  Life has a boundless quality, an eternal quality.  Easter is about being converted from existence to life.

The earliest Christians wanted one thing from Jesus—life, fullness of life.  In her study of the early church, Margaret Miles at Harvard has written that the key prayer the first Christians prayed was:  “God, remove the deadness from our lives.  Make us truly alive.”

Easter is the answer to that prayer.  Jesus lives again.  Why?  So that we might live again.  That’s why Easter is about you, not Jesus.  That’s why Easter is about life, not death.  That’s why Easter is about today, not the future; it’s about the present.  Coming alive today!  Alleluia!

Thirty years ago in El Salvador, where we have a sister church, Archbishop Oscar Romero gave hope to the poor by standing with them, speaking out against a harsh, repressive government.  He was finally killed, murdered, while standing at the altar serving Communion.  But knowing he might be killed, he had said earlier, “If you kill me, I will rise again in the hearts of my people.”  Today Romero’s picture hangs in countless homes and churches, giving hope to the people of El Salvador.  He is a modern-day resurrected Jesus—stirring new life in the hearts of the people.

Today if you’re in a slump, if you’re going through hard times, if you’re stuck in the doldrums, if your existence is wearing you down, if you’re going through the motions, if you’re feeling only half-alive, listen up.  Christ the Lord is risen TODAY.  He is risen —in us.  Made like him, like him WE RISE. 

Today God is bringing us all back to life.  Our job is to accept the gift.  It’s Easter! Accept the gift!  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!