WHY WE NEED EASTER NOW MORE THAN EVER

I Corinthians 15:1-22              Mark 16:1-8

     Sermon from April 12, 2009 (Easter)

            Let me begin by saying a “Blessed Easter” to you all.  Let no chill in the air, no darkness of circumstance, no doubt of mind nor heaviness of heart, no familiarity with Easters past, deprive us of this day’s juice and joy.  Christ’s resurrection turned the despair of the disciples into triumph.  So let it be with us.  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Poet George Herbert wrote:

                        What Adam had, and forfeited for all,

                        Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.

            All thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!

            The disciples needed Easter.  With the crucifixion of Jesus they went into seclusion — to rest, we may assume; as well as to recover from the disappointment of Jesus’ brutal death, to reflect on their own complicity and cowardice, and to begin thinking about their futures.  The transformation of the disciples from this, from a ragtag gang of disheartened, dispirited losers (or so the world regarded them, and so they thought of themselves), skulking in the shadows, to a forceful, enthusiastic band of believers poised to go forth into all the world with the Gospel, this is the most remarkable makeover in human history, and can be explained only by the real-life and life-altering power of the resurrection.   

This is the point the Apostle Paul eagerly makes in the passage read from I Corinthians, Chapter 15.  It’s of “first importance,” he writes, that you understand what happened:  that Christ “was raised on the third day,” that this was not a figure of speechy, not figment of someone’s overheated imagination nor mere wishful thinking, but he actually appeared — to his followers first, and then to many others, “more than five hundred at one time, most of whom are still alive.”  If this were not so, then our faith would be vain and futile, a ludicrous, even laughable conceit.  “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” he declares.  And this fact unleashes the greatest force imaginable.  Easter-power transformed the disciples, and transformed disciples transformed the world. 

            But Easter wasn’t needed only back then.  It’s needed now, as well.    God knows, we need Easter now more than ever.  Because, now more than ever, it looks and feels like a Good Friday world.   Wars and rumors of wars persist.  Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Darfur, pirates on the seas and terrorists on land, it’s a battered and broken old world in which we live.  Hunger persists.  So do corruption and greed.  Recession and recession-anxiety darken the atmosphere, while bitter debate concerning causes and solutions fill the air.  Natural catastrophes, like last week’s earthquake in Italy, continue to strike, reminding us that for all the beauty of the earth, yet, in the words of singer Neco Case, “never turn your back on mother earth.”  And to this litany of the world’s problems, each of us may add burdens we’re carrying in our own lives. 

            So if Easter is to transmit truth and power, it must come not as a tired religious ritual from earlier times, whose meaning is too ancient or mythic to address our present predicament.  Rather, we need Easter now more than ever. 

How does Easter meet this present need?   I’d like to begin by saying a word or two about death, because death is the one problem all humans face, but which no human can solve, and which Easter most clearly and powerfully addresses.  Easter declares, and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ demonstrates, that death is not final.  Christ being raised from death was not intended by God as a singular display of divine power and might.  Rather, the witness of scripture is that Christ’s victory over death prefigures our own.  “As all die in Adam,” it is written, “so all will be made alive in Christ.”

To believe this inexpressibly wonderful promise, to believe that in Jesus Christ the doors of eternal life are sprung open, to believe this with our minds, and beyond belief, to trust it with our hearts, requires a great leap of faith.  It’s implausible.  It goes against what we know concerning space, time, and matter.  It eludes commonsense. 

And because scripture itself puts-forth so many different ideas about heaven, and so many different images of heaven, we may find ourselves with more questions than answers.  Maybe it’s best not to spiritually sweat the details.  In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein, he quotes Einstein’s wife Elsa, that her husband never drove a car because, she explained:  “It was too complicated for him.”  Quantum physics and relativity theory he “got,” but driving a car was “too complicated.”  There’s something to be said, though, for staying focused on the big picture, on the things that really matter.  When we try to overanalyze heaven, pressing for specifications that God does not intend for us to know (or they’d be in scripture), the whole idea of it may become too complicated and unbelievable.  Better to focus on the big picture, to trust the promise, to rest in the blessed assurance that, as scripture declares, “when this earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).

The prospect of death continues to be unsettling, of course.  Even for those of strong and steady faith, it may evoke worry and anxiety, perhaps even fear.  Our natural instincts are to hold on to life, and these are good instincts, survival instincts that God has placed within us.  But because of Easter, we know that when the time comes, we may let go.

Poet Rosanna Warren has crafted one of my favorites, titled simply, “Simile,” concerning the death of her mother.   It goes:

            As when her friend the crack Austrian skier, in the story

            she often told us, had to face

            his first Olympic ski jump and, from

            the starting ramp over the chute that plunged

            so vertiginously its bottom lip

            disappeared from view, gazed

            on a horizon of Alps that swam and dandled around him

            like toy boats in a bathtub, and he could not

            for all his iron determination,

            training, and courage

            ungrip his fingers from the railings of the starting gate, so that

            his teammates had to join in prying

            up, finger by finger, his hands

            to free him, so

            facing death, my

            mother gripped the bed rails but still

            stared straight ahead –  and

            who was it, finally,

            who loosened

            her hands?              (The New Yorker, April 10, 2000, p. 46)

When our earthly life is over, we may permit the Holy Spirit to set our eyes on the horizon, to loosen our hands and our hold on this earthly life, and to deliver us into the promise of eternal life.

This Easter-outlook on death —  that we may face death with confidence, poise and peace — transforms our attitudes toward life, as well, and amends how we choose to live.   John Buchanan, my colleague at Fourth Presbyterian in Chicago, writes:

            People who know the resurrection happened, or who choose

            to trust in resurrection, live in a wholly new world where death

            has no power.

When the message of God’s eternal kingdom is accepted in the heart of the believer, then God becomes king in the heart of the believer now.   This changes everything!  How can it not? 

And what this battered and broken old world in which we live most needs, now more than ever, are Christians who are not Christians in name and ritual alone, but who are truly Easter-people – authentic and ardent, courageous, and caring, helpful and hopeful; people in whose hearts Christ is king.

Easter declares that we are here to love others, especially those whom we may find unlovable, or difficult to love, as in Jesus Christ God first loved us, unworthy though we were, and are; and Easter declares that we are here to be merciful to others, as in Jesus Christ God has forgiven us.

Easter declares that we are to live boldly, to take risks, to be daring more than devout, and passionate more than pious, for as has been said, the art of life is to die young as late as possible.

Easter declares that we are to set our minds on true and worthy things that last forever; to devote our days to prayer and praise and acts of service in the world; and to expend this life we have been given on holy and excellent purposes that will outlast it.

So, a blessed Easter to you; and a joyful Easter, as well, and an Easter that infuses you with renewed passion and commitment, and all strength in believing.

Poet Anne Sexton writes:

            There is hope.

            There is hope everywhere.

            Today God gives milk

            and I have the pail.         (from The Awful Rowing Toward God)

All thanks be to God that out of the overflowing abundance of his love, we receive all we need, and much more besides.

WEDONTDOTHAT

                                    Jeremiah 31:31-34                     John 12:20-36

 Sermon from March 29, 2009

            For religion to be worth anything, it ought to help a person make decisions about how to live.  You’ve heard the old expression about a religious person, that he’s so heavenly-minded he’s no earthly good.  But this cannot, must not, be so.  Religion at its best not only elevates the human spirit heavenward, but somehow brings heaven to earth, as well, bringing eternal wisdom to the challenges and choices we face everyday.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.  We’re making decisions all the time, it seems.

There are small decisions, decisions that don’t really matter in the larger scheme of things but which we’re called-upon to decide, anyway.  What shall I wear today?  Which number shall I put in this Sudoku box?  What shall I read next?

Then there are urgent decisions, decisions that may or may not be important, but either way, have to be made quickly.  Shall I run that yellow light or not?  Shall I say what I really think or not?  Shall I raise my hand and volunteer or not?  Maybe for some of you, earlier today:  shall I go to church or not?

And, of course, there are also decisions that are of first importance, decisions around which the story of our lives is told.  Should we get married, or at the other end of things, divorced, or at least go our separate ways?  Should I continue in this course of study, or in this job or career, or try another?  Should I take a stand on behalf of goodness, or mind my own business; speak the truth or live a lie; do what is right or go along with everyone else?   

Decisions, decisions, decisions.  We make one decision and the next one comes along immediately.  The irony is that the one decision it seems we cannot make is the decision to face no more decisions.

And I’m thinking that there are alot more decisions to be made these days than in former times, because there are so many more choices.  When I was a kid there were 10, maybe 12, kinds of breakfast cereals from which to choose.  Industry experts say there are now over 300.  There used to be three television networks, with an additional independent station or two in the bigger markets.  Now Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, offers nearly 1000 channels.  Kathleen Vohs, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, has done the math, and calculates that Starbucks offers consumers 87,000 drink combinations.  (I believe this, because I always seem to get stuck behind someone who’s mulling-over 86,000 of them)   Someone recently inventoried the shampoo aisle and found different products for each of the following conditions:  blond,

colored, curly, damaged, dry, fine, frizzy, greasy, lifeless, oily, permed, thin, tired, treated, unmanageable and wavy.

These may seem like mere playful examples, but in truth making decisions all the time, even about little things, can be exhausting.  In his book The Paradox of Choice:  Why More is Less, psychologist Barry Schwartz presents research showing that “the mere act of thinking about whether you prefer A or B tires you out,” he writes.  And he proposes that one of three things is likely to occur when people have too many decisions to make:  they end-up making hurried and poor decisions; or they’re dissatisfied with the decisions they make, haunted by the idea that somewhere out there is something better; or they end-up becoming paralyzed, and deciding nothing at all. 

What’s true about cereal, television, coffee and shampoo is also true about decisions concerning religion, faith and values, and these are infinitely more important, of course.  You can choose what to believe or not to believe.  You can choose the god, or the kind of god, you want; or, choose no god at all.  You can decide to live for yourself or for others.  You can decide to devote yourself to personal ends or to great purposes that will outlive you.  You can decide to be cautious or daring, anxious or trusting, compliant or bold; to go along with the ways of the world or follow a higher calling; to accept packaged religion or explore what real contact with the living God might be.

The teaching of scripture is that what’s most needed isn’t the ability to keep making the right decisions, but to so order and arrange one’s life that it becomes second-nature what the Lord requires of us.  To do good becomes something that’s natural.  It’s a habit.  It’s simply who we are.  On the other hand, if we’re constantly trying to decide all the time what to do — decisions, decisions, decisions; if we’re constantly making decisions under the stress and strain of the moment, then we shall decide wrongly some of the time, maybe much of the time.   

The old movie City Slickers was on last night.  I love the character Curly, for which Jack Palance won an Academy Award.  Recall Curly’s philosophy of life:  that there’s one thing that’s important in life, just one thing. 

“What is that one thing?” the Billy Crystal character asks. 

“That’s for you to figure out,” Curly answers. 

He’s right, isn’t he?  The key to life is to discover the one thing that’s the key to life.  Once you know what that one thing is, then you’re no longer conflicted and undecided, anxious and worried about a great many things, facing decisions, decisions, decisions.

In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught us to pray, not “make us strong against temptation,” but rather “lead us not into temptation.”  He knew that if we’re struggling constantly against temptation, trying to decide what to do, we’ll lose the struggle much of the time.  Better so to order and arrange one’s life that temptation doesn’t even enter it.  It’s by nurturing a Christ-like spirit that we come to know the good and to do it.

This is the point we overhear Jesus straining to make in the passage before us this morning.  The teachings of Jesus here were triggered by some Greeks who found themselves in Jerusalem during Passover.  No doubt they’d gotten caught-up in the hubbub and controversy swirling around Jesus and intensifying.  They approached one of the disciples, Philip, and asked for an opportunity to meet and chat with Jesus.  But when their request reached him, Jesus said, “no,” it’s too late for that sort of thing.  The time for theological curiosity and inquiry has passed.  Rather, “the hour has come” for him to die, and for people to decide who they are, and where they stand, in relation to him.

Jesus then puts forth a string of metaphors to characterize the moment.    Unless a seed dies, losing its seed-ness, it cannot germinate and bring forth new life.  Unless a servant gives-up the need to be in-charge, and willingly follows the worthy master, then the goal cannot be achieved.  Unless the troubled soul accepts the will of God, then life is doomed to anguish without end.  Unless a person takes advantage of the light while it shines, then he/she will be left stumbling in the darkness.  Each of these metaphors may be lifted-up and studied individually, but it’s their collective force that impresses:  that Jesus is prepared by character and commitment to face this hour; how about you?  Are you, like the Greeks in this story, vaguely interested in learning more about religion?  Or, are you prepared by character and commitment to decide to follow Jesus Christ, to follow him, and to live for him? 

Gunter Grass is an excellent German writer.  His works are so universally acclaimed, especially the novel The Tin Drum, that in 1999 he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature.  In 1944 Grass was 16 years old.  Like all German teens he was drafted into the Nazi Youth auxiliary, a force made up of boys too young to fight in the war but deployed to help in other ways.  They learned to march, to clean and fire guns, to and to watch the skies for incoming bombers.  They sat through lectures on military tactics, German history and the necessity of making the world free of Jews.  But what Grass most remembers from those years, the thing that “has never left me,” he writes, was a teen his own age, who refused to participate, but would say simply, “We don’t do that.”  Grass recalls:

                        He stuck to the plural.  In a voice neither loud nor

                        soft, he pronounced what he and his refused to do.

                        Four words fusing into one:  Wedontdothat.

This boy, whose name Grass has forgotten, was enormously frustrating to those in charge.  He was tall, blond and blue-eyed, “the epitome” of Nordic racial purity, Grass remarks.  He was also a remarkable athlete.  But he was insubordinate.  Although friendly, good-natured and always ready to help in ordinary things, he refused to take part in anything related to the Nazi ideology and war effort, dismissing it with “wedontdothat.”  The other boys teased him at first.  The teasing hardened into serious hazing, and after awhile beatings.  Always, no matter how harsh he was beaten, the boy would repeat the catchword, “wedontdothat.”  After awhile the teasing, the hazing and the beatings stopped, replaced by admiration and respect.  “His behavior transformed us,” Grass writes.  The others began questioning their own actions, and the cause for which they’d been enlisted, raising doubts about everything they were doing,  “Wedontdothat.”  “Was it all as simple as that?” Grass wonders.  Just, “wedontdothat”?  Then one day the boy disappeared.  His locker was cleared out.  He was never heard of or heard from again.  When asked about him, the drill instructor snapped:  “He was a Bible nut.”

Maybe this is what it means to be “a Bible nut”:  to insist simply that life isn’t necessarily as complicated as we may make it out to be, that there are some things we do as followers of Jesus Christ, and some things we don’t do.  You can tease me.  You can haze me.  You can beat me.  You can get rid of me.  But these things won’t change me, because I’m not always trying to figure-out and decide what to do next.   I know who I am and whose I am, and I know what the Lord requires of me.

This is the ideal Jeremiah had in mind when he imagined what he called “a new covenant,” when God’s law is written on the heart, so that the people of God know the will of God naturally and intuitively.  They don’t even have to think about it.  It shapes and defines their character.

Emerson wrote: “Character is higher than intellect.  A great soul will be strong to live as well as to think.”

This is what we seek:  a character so shaped and braced after the model of Jesus Christ that we are not tossed back-and-forth by every wind of change, nor dazzled by novelty, nor beguiled either by the world’s wisdom or by the world’s foolishness masquerading as wisdom.   As we live in Christ, and as he dwells in us, we become strong to live faithfully and boldly each day, strong to respond to the challenge of discipleship, and strong to face eternity with confidence, poise and peace.

[The Gunter Grass reference is from “How I Spent the War,” in The New Yorker,

June 4, 2007, pgs. 67-81)

THE VEHEMENCE OF COMPASSION

                Acts 20:7-12                    Genesis 33:1-12                     John 17:20-23

   Sermon preached on March 22, 2009

Sunday morning two weeks ago I preached at a church service in Nueva Guinea, Nicaragua.  The host, Pastor Ramon, told me only 20 minutes or so before the service began that he wanted me to preach, so I had to organize my thoughts quickly.  I chose the passage from the Book of Acts that I’ve also chosen for today – Acts 20, verses 7-12.  It’s the story of the young man Eutychus, falling asleep during the Apostle Paul’s sermon.  Eutychus is the little-known patron saint of all those who fall asleep in church.  Because Eutychus had been sitting on the window frame of the third-story room, he fell all the way down to the ground.  Paul and the others hurried down and revived him.   

I love this Bible story, for what it discloses about the church.   

First of all:  it discloses that from the earliest days Christians gathered “on the first day of the week” for prayer and praise, for the breaking of bread, and for preaching and teaching.  When we do these things now we take our place with generations of the faithful who worship God.  We are one-in-the-spirit, one-in-the-Lord, not only across time, with believers past, present and future, but also across space, with believers in far-away places.  Worshipping in that humble Nicaraguan church Sunday-before-last, with its misshapen concrete walls and a leaky tin roof, I was warmed by the knowledge that, at more-or-less the same hour, you were worshipping here, 2000 miles away.  And although our worship services and settings couldn’t be more different, yet we were united in Christ Jesus.   This passage is the earliest unambiguous Biblical evidence we have for the Christian practice of gathering together for worship on Sunday.

The story also discloses a great challenge facing all churches, in all times and places: how to declare and demonstrate the Gospel in ways that are compelling to young people.  Anna Carter Florence, who teaches preaching at our Presbyterian Seminary in Atlanta, remarks playfully about this story:  “This is the first recorded incident in the history of the Christian Church in which a young person is literally bored to death by preaching.”  The Bible doesn’t cover-up embarrassing moments.  One of the great themes of the New Testament, of course, is that the Apostle Paul was a faithful, visionary, effective leader.  Yet scripture is always eager to concede that no one’s perfect, especially not church leaders.  Paul’s preaching put Eutychus to sleep that day.  This text is an indictment of outworn ways of communication, and a call to the church to continually re-imagine and implement new ways of proclaiming the Gospel.

I also love this Bible story because it places Paul in the city of Troas, a crowded port city.  Port cities back then were cosmopolitan and disorderly, with sailors, merchants, tourists and drifters passing-through from all over the world.  From its earliest days the church did not withdraw into safe enclaves, close to its home base in Jerusalem, but pushed-out into the world, all over the world, lifting high the cross amid the tumult of the world’s swirling disorder and diversity. 

And this remains a central calling of God to the church.  It’s hard to ignore this calling in Nicaragua, the next-to-poorest country in the western hemisphere; only Haiti exceeds it for this dubious distinction.  28% of the population lives below the poverty line.  Average annual income is $326/person.   Only 29% of kids complete primary school, with most families unable to meet the direct and hidden costs of education.   And Nueva Guinea, where our presbytery’s partnership is centered, is situated among the poorer areas.   It’s a remarkable city, at once ramshackle, vibrant, noisy, colorful, wild, destitute, energetic, tragic and wondrous –probably a lot like Troas was in Bible times.  And there, right in the middle of Nueva Guinea, are churches like Pastor Ramon’s, declaring and demonstrating by word and deed the amazing love of God in Jesus Christ. 

So that’s another reason I’m drawn to this passage from the Book of Acts:  it dramatizes the fact that the church, from its very earliest days, faced-down the age-old complaint that “charity begins at home,” and rightly discerned the call of God to engage the whole world with the Gospel.

But here’s the biggest and best reason I treasure this text.  I love the idea that the Apostle Paul threw himself on top of Eutychus, and hugged him back to life.  This is the narrative detail that most impressed John Calvin, as well.  We may be surprised by this, if we think of Calvin as brooding, austere and joyless.  But in his Commentary on the Book of Acts Calvin notes that what’s most important about this passage is the “vehemence of compassion” it demonstrates.  The church loves . . . vehemently.  Paul and the others didn’t restore Eutychus with a word of healing, nor by a mere touch, nor with prayer alone, nor by organizing a care committee, as we might today.  The Christians in Troas that day knew what the Lord wanted them to do.  They raced down the steps and hugged Eutychus.  It’s one thing to be concerned.  It’s another thing to take compassionate action.  And this is a model for the church:  to be a community of the faithful, characterized by a vehemence of compassion.

This story invites us to see the Apostle Paul in a different light than usual.  We may think of him as the nuanced theologian writing the Book of Romans, or the angry organizer scolding church leaders in I Corinthians, or the thin-skinned evangelist defending himself from criticism in 2 Corinthians.  But here we see him exuding something different:  a vehemence of compassion. 

Although this passage dramatizes the vehemence of compassion, it doesn’t introduce it as a new theme.  Rather, we may see the vehemence of compassion demonstrated over-and-over again in scripture.  I’ve invited you to visit briefly two such incidents today.

There’s the reunion of Jacob and Esau, as reported in Genesis, chapter 33.  The two brothers had become estranged in a bitter dispute, years earlier.  Each one then went his own way.  Twenty years later, however, Jacob began to reach-out.  [And, as an aside, it’s tough to read this without asking ourselves: “Is there anyone from whom I’m estranged?  Should I be reaching-out to someone?”]  Anyway, Jacob sent word to Esau that he’d like to meet, to patch-up their differences, and possibly to dwell together in harmony.  A get-together is arranged.  Precautions are taken, on both sides.  Awkwardness and tension are expected.  But when the day arrives, well, when the day arrives, it is written:  “Esau ran to meet him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they [both] wept.”  The vehemence of compassion.

And then there’s the passage I read from the Book of John, Chapter 17.  It’s the Last Supper.  Jesus is praying for his disciples, praying for the church.  And he prays that the church will be characterized by vehement compassion.  “The glory that you have given me, I have given them,” Jesus prays, “so that they may be one, as we are one . . . completely one.” 

New Testament expert Francis Moloney writes of this passage:

            Jesus’ having made God known to the disciples has

            opened a new possibility:  that they share in the oneness

            between the Father and the Son. . . Jesus asks the Father

            that believers be united as one . . . but the unity of believers

            is not an end in itself; it is “so that the world may believe

            that you have sent me” . . . The chain [of love] runs on

            unendingly.

I’ve been immersing myself in things Nicaraguan.  Beginning a couple months ago I’ve been studying Nicaraguan history, culture and literature, looking at Nicaraguan newspapers, listening to Nicaraguan music, following the Nicaraguan baseball league (go, Los Indios), and learning Spanish (or, trying to learn Spanish, anyway), in preparation for the trip.  But I now know that what matters most is not knowledge acquired in such ways as these.  Rather, I’ve been blessed, touched and transformed by experiences of the vehemence of compassion.

I recall a woman in the church where I preached.  Before the service she came to the front, sat on a step, rested her head on folded arms, and with sighs and sobs, prayed.  This wasn’t unusual, I gathered.  It was a way of preparing for worship.  But after awhile a little boy came and stood next to her.  He couldn’t have been more than three years old.  Was he her son?  Probably.  I didn’t know.  But surely he was too young to know what burdens and sorrows she was taking the Lord in prayer.  The little boy reached-out.  He put his hand on her.  He rubbed her shoulder.  He stood beside her for five minutes, his little hand gently patting, pacifying and protecting her.  The vehemence of compassion.

I recall Ramon’s wife, Estelle.  Henry VanderGoot and I stayed in their home.  Conditions were primitive.  Dirt floors.  No running water or electricity.  The kitchen wasn’t a kitchen at all, but a small area outside, where Estelle prepared meals over an open fire.  Yet despite the endless difficulty and grueling labor of running a household under such conditions, Estelle exuded a spirit of irrepressible good cheer.  Their humble home was a beehive of energy and activity.  Children and their friends, neighbors and church members, nieces and nephews, in-laws and assorted relations too many to name or number, were constantly around, coming-and-going.  And for all, Estelle offered a big smile, an even bigger hug, and somehow always managed to scrape-together something to eat, none of which was eaten without first giving thanks to God.  The vehemence of compassion.

I recall the final evening in Nueva Guinea, set-aside for a potluck supper, hosted by the Nicaraguans who hosted the 14 of us from Lake Michigan Presbytery.  I expected a simple meal, adequate but spare.  Instead, there was a great outpouring of food, it kept coming and coming.  I half-wondered if Jesus himself might be outside, multiplying loaves and fish!  The vehemence of compassion.

I recall a facility we visited in Managua, for children with disabilities.  Most of the children suffered profound afflictions.  They had unimaginably complicated and irreversible disorders, with few of the treatment and rehab protocols available here.  The children were delightful and poignant, of course.  I played peek-a-boo with a little girl in a wheelchair, whose smiles and laughter are as real to me today as they were then, and will be with me always, I am sure.  I thought of my own granddaughters, and of the incredible benefits and blessings they enjoy by comparison, born into a loving family, in this wonderful country.  But Christ is Lord of all, and I could see at once that he is present with these children through their remarkable caregivers.  If working with these difficult children discouraged them, they didn’t show it.  They tended to their precious patients like ministering angels, with astonishing kindness, patience and gentleness.  The vehemence of compassion.

            I recall a dedication ceremony, in the park at Nueva Guinea, of a recently-completed monument to peace.  Because several churches in our presbytery helped finance this project, they waited until we were there to unveil and dedicate it.  I had nothing to do with this, so I watched simply as an observer.  The base of the monument contains guns and ammunition voluntarily turned-in by local combatants who had fought on both sides of the civil war in Nicaragua, between the Sandinistas and the Contras.  Weapons once pointed at each other in hate are now brought together in a single obelisk, with a dove of peace on top.  The vehemence of compassion.

            When Eutychus was in trouble that day, the Apostle Paul stopped talking and instead acted with compassion.  Let this be the marching orders for the church.  We can sit around endlessly speculating on the meaning and character of compassion, or we can just get on with it.  My trip to Nicaragua reminded me that it’s better by far to just get on with it.  I hope you agree.

CARVING OUT LITTLE ISLANDS OF BELIEF        

   2 Kings 5:1-14

Sermon presented on February 15, 2009

Today we find ourselves in the midst of three important holidays.  Yesterday was Valentines Day.  Tomorrow is Presidents Day.  And on Tuesday Spring Training camps open for most teams.  Ernie Harwell, the great Tigers broadcaster, once said baseball is part sport, part business and part religion.  So for some of us the opening of Spring Training is a sacred occasion.  But until it makes its way officially onto the Presbyterian Planning Calendar I suppose I ought to stick with the lectionary texts.

            I’d like to look closely at today’s Old Testament reading, and I invite you to look with me.  It’s the story of Naaman the leper, from the Book of 2 Kings, chapter 5, verses 1-14.  Bible scholar T. R. Hobbs calls this passage simply “remarkable . . . a fascinating example of Hebrew narrative art.”  It’s a magnificent story, with appealing characters, a compelling plot, and a hopeful message.  That message is one of God’s purposes:  that as we trust God, and live more-and-more in relationship with Him, then His presence, His love and His eternal plan become clearer to us.

            Here is a basic Biblical truth which we can claim and to which we may cling, no matter what the changing seasons and circumstances of life.  Essayist Judith Warner, in a piece titled “Do You Believe?” laments how difficult it can be to stay happy and hopeful in this present world, a world afflicted with problems almost everywhere, it seems, and darkened with cynical pessimism about almost everything.  She writes:

                        One of the greatest risks, I think, of living in a secular

                        world is something I might call the Woody Allenization

                        of everything.  Too much reason.  Too much self-awareness.

                        Too much blah-blah.  Too little wonder, and marvel and

                        faith – in the largest and vaguest sense of the world.  You

have, in this climate, to carve out whatever little islands of

belief that you can. (New York Times, 12/23/08, A21)

            The story of Naaman carves out several such little islands of belief. 

A brief review.  Naaman was commander-in-chief of the army of Aram, in the 9^th-century BC.  Aram was located in what’s now southern Syria.  Its capital was Damascus.  Naaman was the General Patraeus of his time, both a brilliant military tactician and a highly-regarded person.  When Naaman came down with a dreaded skin disease – called leprosy in scripture, but leprosy didn’t exist in the Ancient Near east; probably he suffered from chronic skin lesions, for which there was no known cure or relief – Naaman’s affliction concerned many.  Among the circle of those anxious for Naaman was a young Israelite girl who’d been captured in one of Syria’s raids into Israel, and now was working in Naaman’s household.  It’s testimony to Naaman’s character that even those captured by him cared about him.  The girl told her mistress, Naaman’s wife, that there was a prophet of great power in Israel, Elisha.  Naaman took the girl’s counsel seriously.  He went to the King of Aram and asked the King to make arrangement for him to meet this Elisha, by way of diplomatic channels.  The King agreed.  Once in Israel, a misunderstanding occurred, nearly starting a war.  (Diplomacy in the Middle East has never been easy, has it? Still isn’t!)  Naaman finally found Elisha, but when told, through an intermediary, that all he had to do was bathe himself seven times in the Jordan River, he became angry, thinking he was being disrespected.  But Naaman’s servants persuaded him to follow the prophet’s directions, and he was healed.

            I propose that at least three little islands of belief emerge from this story, concerning the love of God, beliefs that are simple and sure.

First, we can believe, like Naaman, that there is help and hope in our times of distress and need. 

When word came to Naaman that the Israelite prophet Elisha might be able to cure him, Naaman didn’t raise any of the objections we might have expected:  that it’s unimaginable to suppose little Israel has any resources that can compare with the strength and riches we enjoy here in mighty Syria; that it would be embarrassing for me, a renown and powerful man, to seek the aid of a foreign prophet, and what on earth is a prophet, anyway?; and what does this mere servant-girl know, what’s her interest in this matter, and who is she to suggest to me what I should I do?  But if any of these reservations occurred to Naaman, he didn’t let-on that they did.  Rather, he acted as though trusting that there is help and hope out there, somewhere, that he is not forever stuck in a misery from which there is no release or relief. 

It’s the same attitude that characterized the fellow in the New Testament passage, also afflicted with a dreaded skin disease.  He came to Jesus, and said to him:  “If you choose, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40-45).   Like Naaman, he didn’t surrender to despair.  He didn’t admit defeat.  He didn’t give-up hope.  He trusted that help is available, so that tomorrow, or perhaps the day-after-tomorrow, will be better than today.

Hope is a worthy and useful attitude, of course.  In the great closing line spoken by the character Andy Dufresne, from the movie Shawshank Redemption:  “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.”   Being hopeful is a good way to be. 

But unless hope is grounded in something reliable and real, then it’s merely the mind playing tricks.   We can be people of hope, not as technique – you’ve got to be something, so why not be hopeful (?), there’s nothing to lose – but in response to the promise of God that He is merciful, just and kind, and that all things work together for good for those who trust Him.

This sounds comforting and encouraging as its slips off my tongue (doesn’t it?), all so simple and sweet.  But the life of faith isn’t easy at all (is it?).   What makes it difficult, is that God gives us this promise of deliverance, but not a plan.  Naaman did not know, had no way of knowing, that God was already waiting for him in the waters of the Jordan River.  To move within this force field of God’s love required him to leave the security of his present life – he may have been miserable, but the misery we know may be preferred to the joy we can only imagine — and to travel to another place, a place where his power and prestige gain him nothing, to be helped by someone he has never heard of before and over whom he has no power or authority.  Naaman had to go-forth into the unknown, driven solely by hope. 

Thinking about Naaman, I wonder about myself, and then I wonder about all of us:  are we willing and able to do this, to go forth into the unknown, driven solely by the hope that God is there?   For all of us find ourselves afflicted, at one time or another, or for some, much of the time, like Naaman was afflicted; with a problem (or problems) so deep we cannot solve them by ourselves, leaving us needy, despondent, confused and afraid.  May we, like Naaman, be bold to go forth in the hope that God’s unexpected gifts and graces will come to us, to strengthen and deliver us.

In a sea of uncertainty about what to believe, here’s a second island of belief:  that we can believe, like Elisha, that God will use us to bring help and hope to others. 

The primary task of a Christian is not to bring deliverance to others.  That’s the work of God.  But we know that God uses his people as agents of reconciliation, strength, healing and hope, people through whom His graces flow into the world and to others;  like Elisha, for example.

Elisha is an enigmatic Old Testament character.  He worked great miracles.  Bible stories tell of Elisha parting the waters of the Jordan, clearing the spring outside Jericho with impurities, and feeding 100 men with twenty loaves of barley and a few ears of grain.  Most remarkable of all, a dead man was revived when he came into contact with Elisha’s bones.  In this instance, though, Elisha chose not even to see Naaman.  Rather, through an intermediary, he told Naaman to wash in the Jordan River.  Naaman was insulted.  He regarded being treated this way as dismissive and disrespectful.  But in pointing Naaman away from himself, and re-directing him toward the one true source of God’s help, Elisha was, among other things, modeling for us the true character of discipleship.

Clifford Morris, who studied under C.S. Lewis at Oxford, recalls that he once asked Lewis why he didn’t preach more often.  Lewis replied that after he’d deliver a sermon, people would shower compliments and praise on him, and he’d quickly come to think, “yes, what a clever and fine fellow I am,” so that “I had to get to my knees pretty quickly to kill the deadly sin of pride.”  Lewis preferred to speak to college students, who were more likely to file-in and file-out without flattery.  Now, I’m hesitant to tell this story, lest you withhold kind words from me.  Encouragement is always appreciated.  But Lewis’ attitude was quite Elishaic, if that’s an okay adjective to use; in the spirit of Elisha, who, not drawing attention to himself as a source of help and hope, instead pointed Naaman toward the one true source, the one God whose love is reliable and strong, and endures forever.

Thinking about Elisha, I wonder about myself, and then I wonder about all of us:  are we able and willing to do this, to regard ourselves as humble servants of the Word, whose highest calling and greatest joy is in bringing people into the force field of God’s love.

Here’s a final little island of belief:  we can believe, like the servants in the story, that God works His will through improbable people.

            Have you noticed the role of the “little” people in this story?  It was an Israelite servant-girl who suggested that Naaman seek help from Elisha.  And once he was there, it was his servants who persuaded him to calm down from feeling slighted, and to go ahead to the Jordan as Elisha counseled.  The names of these servants aren’t given.  They’re not important, as the world measures such things.  But the whole story turns on their actions.  God’s purposes are fulfilled by way of these unnamed “little” people, speaking truth to power.

            The Lord works through those whom the world ignores.  So we dare not ignore anyone.  Is there something you and I can do this week that will live-out this idea of scripture?  There may be a word of appreciation to be said to someone we’ve long taken for granted, a gesture of interest shown in someone who in some way serves us yet whom we rarely engage as equals, a time of attention paid to someone who has been trying to connect with us, a respectful regard for someone who lacks our intellectual knowledge of the faith but who may have much to show us about what it actually means to live for Christ.   It might be simply making a decision to suspend, as best we are able, everything snarky, cynical and critical about how we regard others, and to be open to the wonders of God’s love, as such wonders come to us through improbable people whom God sends our way.

                        Too much reason.  Too much self-awareness.  Too much

                        blah-blah.  Too little wonder, and marvel, and faith.

            If this is indeed a correct diagnosis of our present condition, and I think it is, then let us claim and cling-to what scripture declares and Christ himself demonstrates:  that there is healing in the love of God, healing and strength and joy, and much more besides.

                                                     ON DOING THE RIGHT THING

                                                   EVEN IF NOBODY IS WATCHING

             Mark 1:21-28, 12:38-40

                Sermon presented on February 1, 2009

Jesus and the disciples entered the synagogue in Capernaum.  Capernaum was a Roman military post along a major highway, so a fairly important city with a diverse population, probably of about 2,000.   In 1969 archaeologists working at Capernaum began to unearth walls of a first century synagogue, buried beneath the remains of a larger 4^th century synagogue.  It’s thought that these lower level remains are from the actual synagogue where Jesus taught.  In Bible times all men were invited to participate in the reading and interpretation of Scripture, so there was nothing exceptional about Jesus speaking on this occasion.  He was no doubt regarded as a faithful and capable member of the congregation, and in teaching he was conforming to the normal religious life of the people.

            But though this Sabbath day service began as something ordinary, it turned into something extraordinary, instead.  Scripture doesn’t report what Jesus said.  There’s no mention of content.  Rather, it is written:  [The people] “were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as one of the scribes.”

            Now, our sympathies may go-out to any scribes who happened to be there at the time.  They hadn’t said or done anything that day.  Has this ever happened to you – you’re someplace, quietly minding your own business, and suddenly you’re busted? 

I was at a Super Bowl Party once, watching the game.  Alot of people were milling around the outskirts of the room, not interested in the game at all, but chatting while waiting for the commercials.  I was vaguely aware that a group to my right, and little behind me, was debating whether or not you have to go to church to be a Christian.  This topic is of some interest to me, but not as much as the game, so I ignored it.  Until a woman said, in a shrill voice I couldn’t ignore, or pretend to ignore:  “It’s the preachers these days, all they ever do is ask for money.”  Suddenly there’s silence in the room, an awkward silence, as everyone looks at me.  And I’m thinking:  what did I do?  Lady, I don’t want your money.  I just want to watch the game.

So, we may imagine the scribes in the synagogue that day – listening to Jesus teach, perhaps; or planning their own lessons, because experts believe that in Jesus’ time scribes were not mere copyists, as the name suggests, but scholars of religion and law; or perhaps they were doing crossword puzzles, or texting one another, or whatever, who knows.  But on this day, anyway, they’ve neither said nor done anything offensive.  Suddenly, there’s this silence in the room, an awkward silence, as people look to Jesus, then over to them, and exclaim:  this man from Galilee teaches “as one having authority, and not as one of the scribes.”  And if I’m a scribe, I’m thinking:  what did I do?

We have to look elsewhere in the Gospel to answer that question.  One of those elsewheres is Mark, Chapter 12, verses 38-40, where it is written that Jesus said:

            Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long

            robes, and to be greeted with the respect in the marketplaces,

            and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of

            honor at banquets!  They devour widows’ houses, and for

            the sake of appearance they say long prayers.

Here lies the crucial criticism of the scribes: that they act “for the sake of appearance.”  What matters most to them is that others are watching them.  They walk-around all the time, drawing attention to themselves.  They strut and preen in elegant, expensive clothes; the phrase “long robes” doesn’t refer to the length, really, but to the extravagant abundance of rich flowing fabrics.  They grab the best seats, right down front, not only in the synagogue, but at private meals and parties, as well; it doesn’t matter what the occasion is, they regard themselves as celebrities, always claiming the center of attention.  The clown in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night could have been addressing the scribes when he tells Malvolio:  “Leave thy vain bibble babble.”  The scribes also leveraged their status to squeeze money from people.  And Jesus’ final criticism of the scribes is that they pray long prayers, not because they have a lot of to say to God, nor because they want to be open to hearing what God reveals to them, but “for the sake of appearance,” they just want everybody to watch them, and to be impressed by their holiness.   They speak “presumptuously,” as is written of the false prophets in the Book of Deuteronomy.

So, then, back to the story:  the people in the synagogue that day were astonished, not by the content of Jesus’ teaching, but by his integrity.  “He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”   Whereas they were arrogant and vain, he was humble and self-giving.  Whereas they wanted attention, he re-directed peoples’ attention to God.  And whereas they were always performing, pitching all they did to the crowd, he taught the sublime truth – and lived it, as well – that what matters most is doing the right thing even if nobody is watching.

In fact, this may be seen as the very definition of integrity: what we do when nobody is watching.  When we’re trying to impress others there are various ways our actions may be affected, all bad.  Like the scribes, we may act full of ourselves in order to disguise the emptiness inside.   We may say what’s clever and pointed rather than what’s truthful and kind.  We may be so in love with ourselves that there’s no room for anyone else, so vain we think the love song is about us.  Or the opposite may occur, as well:  we may act sweet, charitable and generous of spirit when others are watching, but then do quite the opposite in private, when nobody is watching, the hypocrisy Jesus so often denounced as an enemy of true discipleship.  No, what matters most is that there be a seamless continuity between our inner and outer lives, between what we say and what we do, between our faith and our life.  This is the quality of character the people saw in Jesus that day.  It was so unusual, and so compelling, that they were “astounded.”

What happened next astounded them, as well.  A man with an unclean spirit entered the synagogue.  What this man’s exact problem was, we cannot know; apparently it was some mix of physical, psychological and of course spiritual afflictions.  Jesus healed the suffering man.  This electrified everyone.  “They were all amazed,” it is written.  But notice, again, that what most touched and transformed the people was not the miracle itself, anymore than what had astonished them earlier was the content of his teaching.  Rather, they’re amazed that Jesus acted “with authority,” that is, with more than just power, but with integrity, as well, and holy purpose, and transparent honesty and holiness.

Writer John Updike died on Tuesday.  At his best, Updike was an artful story-teller and essayist, usually taking with great seriousness the role of religion in the lives of his characters.  Updike wrote:  “Truth should not be forced.  It should simply manifest itself.”  I thought of his comment this week, in relation to the text before us today.  The difference between the scribes and Jesus was that they were forcing people to pay attention – to them, to their words, to their rules and requirements; whereas in Jesus the truth simply manifested itself.

As we come to the Lord’s Table, let us respond to Christ’s invitation in a spirit of humility and holiness, praying for grace to be people of integrity, that we would not be multiple selves — an outer self and an inner self, a public self and a private self, a normal self and a religious self – but one self (body, mind and spirit), with Christ at the center, fully devoted to Him.

                 WHAT I WILL SAY TO OUR NEW PRESIDENT WHEN HE CALLS

               I Kings 3:3-15                    I Timothy 2:1-6

                  Sermon presented on January 18, 2009

President-elect Obama has often said, famously now:  “My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.”  With that promise in mind, I’ve been thinking he might call me, to chat about things, but the call hasn’t come (not yet, anyway).  I know he’s been busy these days, and sometimes I turn my cell phone off.  But I’m prepared, when he calls, to say a few things to him, and I’d like to share some of those thoughts with you today.

            First and most important of all, I want him to know that I’ll be praying for him, and that we’ll all be praying here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.  Our praying for him is not a political act.  I’ve been leading worship for 33 years, and have led prayers for Republican presidents 21 of those years and for Democratic ones 12 years, now to be 16, at least.  It’s what we do in obedience to the Word of God, where it is written:  “ . . . prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings [should] be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions” (I Tim. 2:1, 2).   

            John Calvin wrote – and I might have to take a moment to remind President Obama that this is the 500^th year of Calvin’s birth, and he might want to come to Grand Rapids to participate in some of the festivities marking the occasion, and if he does, he’s warmly welcomed to worship with us here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church! – but, that aside, Calvin wrote about this passage from scripture:  “Whatever character they may be who rule over us, we are commanded to offer up public prayers for them.”

            And I would take the opportunity to tell the new President that in the Church of Scotland, from whose spiritual soil the Presbyterian Church sprang, every Sunday prayers are raised for the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Princes and “all the royal family.”  This doesn’t mean that those who are praying support the policies of the royal family; in truth, polls suggest that a majority of people in Scotland favor the elimination of the monarchy altogether.  But the wisdom of the Church of Scotland is, that’s another issue, to be debated at other times and places.  In worship, prayers are to be said for “all who are in high positions,” it is written in scripture.  And so we have often prayed here in worship for President Bush, and now we shall pray for President Obama.

            Kevin Ferris, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes that he recently dropped-by the meeting of a high school Young Republicans Club in a Philadelphia suburb, to find out what these young people were thinking as the Obama inauguration approaches, something they surely regard as unwelcome.  A 16 year old told him she’d like President Obama to know she’ll be praying for him.  “What sort of prayer?” the reporter asked.  She said:  “May you be safe in times of war and peace.  May you return to your family a better person than you were before.  May you learn the price of being a president, and be able to carry that weight.  May you remember the hopes and prayers of a great nation rest with you.”

            Amen to that.  President Obama needs to know that people of faith will be praying for him, without regard to their own political affiliations or sensitivities.  I’d like to assure him of that.

            Here’s another thing I’ll tell him when he calls.  I’ll encourage him to go to church.

            This may be a touchy subject, so I need to raise it carefully, because Barak Obama belonged to a church, that church in Chicago, and it didn’t work out well for him.  I might also tell him, by the way, as a friendly aside, that I appreciated his defending the preacher there.  It’s not that I agreed with the ideas of that preacher, ideas which I found disagreeable.  But, well, I sort of like a guy who stands-by a preacher when everyone else is piling-on!  In the end, though, Barak Obama came to conclude with many others, that he could no longer defend the indefensible, and he left that church.  But he seems not to have chosen another church.  And this is what I will encourage him to do.

            When you don’t go to a particular church regularly, but worship here-and-there, now-and-then, you begin to lose the clarifying, correcting, and caring fellowship that healthy faith must have.  It’s through worship and study groups, the words to hymns and prayers, communion celebrated and mission projects shared with brothers and sisters in the faith, and so forth, that we come to understand Biblical faith rightly and to know what the Lord requires of us.  Left to our own, sin begins to reshape what we believe to our own ends and purposes. 

            Absent a community of faith, we end-up being tossed back-and-forth, believing anything, standing for nothing.  I might even tell President Obama, if I dare — (I’ll have to assess how the conversation’s going) — that I’ve already gotten hints of this kind of thing, in his selecting a high profile evangelical minister to pray at one inauguration event, then a high profile liberal minister to pray at another.  I’d like to suggest that you don’t have to do this, Mr. President.  Instead choose a church that relates to your spiritual aspirations and then be unapologetically grounded in it.  Personally, I don’t care if it’s evangelical or progressive, integrated or African-American, pietist or activist, whatever; but choose a church, make it your church, and then become involved in its life and work.  This will be better, I think, better for him and for the nation, than four years of constantly trying to balance things out.

            Another advantage of going to church is he won’t be coaxed into watching the Sunday morning pundits criticize him on Meet the Press.

            Now, if President Obama asks me my opinion, I’ll be eager to tell him that there are excellent Presbyterian churches in Washington.  The closest one to the White House is New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in walking distance, where Abraham Lincoln worshiped.  That was his church.  And Lincoln spoke the most profound and sublime words ever authored by an American President concerning faith and civil responsibility; he said:

                        With malice toward none, with charity for all, with

                        firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,

                        let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind-

                        up the nation’s wounds.

            Yes, Mr. President, you might want to think about becoming a Presbyterian.  But I know that’s not what you called about, I’d be quick to assure him. 

So, let’s move on to other things.   President Obama may be thinking his call to me is shaping-up as unproductive, if he wanted my ideas about particular policies and programs.  But to re-cycle a line that’s familiar to him, that’s “above my pay grade.”  I don’t know how to solve the worst U.S. economy in 50 years, nor the international challenges of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli-Gaza conflict, and al-Qaeda gathering strength in remote regions of Pakistan.  To paraphrase Woody Allen, I don’t even know how the can opener works, how can I know these things?   I do have opinions about political topics, of course, all kinds of opinions about all sorts of things.  But I’m daunted by the problems we face as a nation, and rather than add to the noise of partisan debate, I’d like instead simply to transmit to President Obama my wish that he receive wisdom greater than his own.

I would encourage him to turn to the Book of I Kings, Chapter 3:  a story of Israel’s kingly succession, from David to Solomon.  Early in Solomon’s reign – in his new administration, we might say – he went to the temple at Gibeon, to seek the help of the Lord.  At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon, in a dream.  The Lord said to him:  “ask what I should give you.”   And Solomon said:  “an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.”  Solomon did not ask for riches or honor, nor for victory in war, nor for the elimination of adversaries, none of the things that might be a new leader’s wildest and more wonderful fantasy.  Rather, he asked the Lord for “an understanding mind.” 

This sounds simple enough.  But it isn’t.  It’s hard for any of us to ask for wisdom, humbly.  Everyone agrees that humility is of first importance – Thomas More called it, “that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot” – but though we honor it in theory, we’re still inclined to be “know-it-alls” in practice.  And humility must be especially illusive for someone who is being lifted-up and regarded by many as superhuman, as a savior, almost. 

I look forward to telling President Obama that I happened to be in Chicago on Election Day, at a meeting.  I was in Lincoln Park, which with its population of young urban professionals may be among the most Obama-friendly neighborhoods in America.  What I sensed there that day, in the coffee shops, restaurants and convenience stores, was no mere, “great, our guy won,” but an expectation that all of the world’s problems will now be solved.  Veteran reporter Sandy Grady recently wrote in USA Today that, in her experience of covering eight Presidents, there’s never been one who “carries [such] enormous expectations . . . that he’s the Miracle Man.”  To some extent these expectations have been fueled by Obama’s own promises.  But this seems to me unreasonable, unfair and childish; and also unwise, if President Obama were to take it seriously.  So, I might suggest to him, when he calls, to re-read the Bible, the part about Solomon, who, precisely at the moment of his greatest power and popularity, yet humbly asked God for “an understanding mind,” that he might be able to govern wisely, faithfully and well.

On Election Day evening in Chicago, I purchased a bottle of champagne to bring to a reception I was attending.  Everyone in the store was in a lively, celebrative mood.  When I put the champagne on the shelf the clerk asked:  “Are you celebrating the end of the dark past or the beginning of the bright future?”  I made some kind of lame joke, I forget what I said, because I didn’t want to get into it with him, not with other customers lining-up behind me.  But what I’d liked to have said is something like:  “I believe absolutely that’s there’s a bright future, a light so bright that it will overcome the darkness of the past and present.  But that light is not coming into the world on Election Day, not this one, nor any other.  That light is the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, and it will shine on the day of his coming.”

            Our confidence that God can be trusted to fulfill his promises should not lessen our interest in this earthly existence and the affairs of state.  God calls us to be co-creators with him in bringing order out of the chaos of this world’s sinful madness.  Politics and government are means God ordains by which this holy work may be lived-out.  And so as my talk with President Obama comes to a close – because, I’m thinking, he still has a great many more calls to make –  I will bless our new President with words Thomas Jefferson spoke in his First Inaugural:  “may that infinite power who rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best . . . to enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked, amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.”

                           WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF HOCKEY?

                                        Luke 19:1-10   Colossians 3:23-24     Deuteronomy 25:14-16

                                                        Sermon presented on January 11, 2009

The question posed by the title of this sermon, “What Does God Think About Hockey?” appeared as a headline recently in the Washington Post.  Washington Capitals’ defenseman Brian Pothier is a practicing Christian, “definitely not [in] the majority in the hockey world,” he says.  Hearing of this, Post religion writer Kathy Orton interviewed Pothier, hoping to find-out how he relates his faith to his work.  Later-on I’ll say a thing or two about how he answered her questions, but for the moment I’d like to broaden the question, so that it takes-in all of us.  For Brian Pothier, hockey is a job.  It’s what he does for work.  So the larger question is:  what does God think about whatever it is we do for work?  What does God think about our vocations?  I invite you to take the sermon title, and change the word hockey to the word that fits you.  What does God think about . . . sales?  What does God think about . . . teaching?  What does God think about . . . engineering, or homemaking; office work, or medicine?  construction, or retirement?  business, or social service?   And so forth.  Is your vocation related to your faith in some way; or is it a part of life you see as wholly separate from, and perhaps even at odds with, your faith?

There are many different reasons why we spend the days of our lives as we do.  Most practically, we need to earn a living, of course.  And in this present world it’s not only money we’re after, but benefits, as well, like health care and retirement, which may be as important as cash salary.  Sometimes people may feel forced into one kind of work or another by factors beyond their control — by family obligations, say, which limit  mobility, or by health considerations, and so forth.  And there are periods of time when larger or macro-economic forces come into play, when a person’s just happy to have a job, any job.  My Grandfather Raum sold vanilla extract door-to-door during the Depression.  He died before I was born, so I never had a chance to ask him, but I’m guessing he wasn’t responding to some higher call to be a vanilla extract salesman, but rather scrambling to provide for his family in tough times.  And while our present economic malaise is certainly not of the depth of the 1930s, yet increasingly there are people now, and perhaps some of you, who find themselves scrambling these days.  For reasons such as these I always want to be slow to talk in lofty terms about vocation, or about rising to one’s calling or fulfilling one’s destiny.  When you can’t pay the VISA bill, the person on the other of the line is unlikely to have interest in such ideas, however sublime. 

But, when you consider how much of our lives is spent at work — just count-up the hours, the days, the years of our lives – clearly, God cares about this major part of our lives.  What kind of God what it be who doesn’t care about what we do from 1/3 to a ½ of our time here on earth?  Whatever kind of God that might be, it’s not the God of scripture. 

Certainly not the God who charged Adam to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” a charge which, in the words of theologian Nancy Pearcey, represents . . .

            . . . what we might call the first job description:  to develop

            the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities,

            governments, laws . . . to harness the natural world:  plant

            crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music . . .

            [and] to create cultures and build civilizations – nothing less.

Nor the God who in Jesus Christ met and befriended people in the workplace:  farmers and fishermen, homemakers and academics, wine stewards and vineyard workers, shepherds and temple employees, soldiers and civil servants, parents being parents and children being children.  Jesus also told parables featuring ordinary people engaged in the everyday work of their everyday lives.

Nor do we see indifference to work in the God who declares in the New Testament:  “You know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (I Cor. 15:58).    And certainly not the God who counsels in Scripture:  “Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord” (Col. 3:23).

Rabbi Jeffrey K, Salkin tells this story, about a move his family made.

            The boss of the moving crew was a delightful, crusty

            gentleman [Salkin writes], a dead ringer for Willie Nelson.

            I had never met anyone so enthusiastic about his or her work,

            and I asked him the source of his enthusiasm.

“Well, you see, I’m a religious man,” he answered, “and my

            work is part of my religious mission.”

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            “Well, it’s like this.  Moving is hard for most people.  It’s a

            very vulnerable time for them.  People are nervous about

            going to a new community, and about having strangers pack

            their most precious possessions.  So, I think God wants me

            to treat my customers with love, and to make them feel that

            I care about their things and their life.  God wants me to help

            make their changes go smoothly.  If I can be happy about it,

            maybe they can be, too.”

Brian Pothier, the hockey player, said pretty much the same thing.  “I don’t walk into the training room with a Bible in my hand and start” talking about religion, he told the interviewer.  Rather, “the best way for me to show guys what I believe, or how I believe, is just to live it out.”

So, I’ve put a number of Biblical ideas about work on the table this morning.  Let’s gather them up, and see how these ideas come into play in the life and work of one particular Bible character, Zacchaeus. 

Zacchaeus “was a wee little man/a wee little man was he,” as we used to sing in Bible School.    He was a tax collector, but he might as well have been a hockey player, or anything else, for that matter – butcher, baker, candlestick maker — because the primary problem with Zacchaeus wasn’t what he did but how he did it.  Now, to be sure, in the world governed by imperial Rome, a tax collector – or, Bible scholars note, “toll collector” is probably a better translation, that Zacchaeus’ job was to assess fees from toll booths situated at transport and commercial centers – this was work people despised, naturally, and they looked down on those who did it.   We have not only the witness of scripture, but reports from other places around the Roman world, as well, that those who collected taxes were scorned everywhere.  Taxes created financial hardship, of course, but more than that, it was humiliating and degrading to pay taxes imposed by an occupying power.   “Taxation with representation,” would come the cry centuries later, from a people also occupied by an imperial across the sea.  So, all this is true, but it’s not what’s principally at stake here.  This may surprise you, but look closely at the text and you’ll see that at no point does Jesus tell Zacchaeus to stop working as a tax collector, like he tells the woman at the well, for example, to “go and sin no more.”   No, he says nothing like that to Zacchaeus.  The work of tax collecting in itself seems not to be counted by Jesus as unworthy work.  What’s the problem, then?

The problem was the way Zacchaeus performed his work.  He defrauded people.  God had given his opinion about unscrupulous business practices centuries earlier, in his indictment of those who conned unsuspecting farmers by the use of rigged scales.     “You shall have a perfect and just weight,” it is written, “a perfect and just measure.”  Those who practice business dishonestly “are abhorrent to the Lord,” the passage continues (Deut. 25:15, 16).  Zacchaeus was abhorrent to the Lord.  But Christ saw in him, as he sees in all of us, the possibility of change.  He looked-up at Zacchaeus, in the tree.  “Zacchaeus, come down,” he said, “for today I must stay at your house.”  We need to talk.   Zacchaeus resolved to payback victims all he’d embezzled from them, with interest, and to commit the rest of his life to the service of the poor.  It’s not clear why Zaccchaeus made such an immediate change, anymore than it’s clear why earlier Simon and Andrew immediately left their nets behind and followed Jesus.  Some come to Jesus slowly, over time, while for others the call of Christ claims and compels the personality wholly.   As for Zacchaeus,  his soul was redeemed and renewed, and perhaps his new character might impress others at work and inspire them to change, as well.

2009 is the 500^th year of John Calvin’s birth.  It’s being marked variously all over the world, with a number of worthy events happening in Grand Rapids.  Here at Forest Hills Laura and I are team-teaching a class on Calvinism as Calvin’s ideas are expressed in the Westminster Catechism.  And from time-to-time in sermons this year, I intend to highlight themes that are characteristic of Calvin’s thought.  Today’s is one of them. 

 Historians David Hall and David Vaughan write:

            One of the culture-changing aspects of Calvin’s leadership

            was his emphasis on the sacredness of ordinary vocations.

            Prior to his time [they continue], workers felt little sense of

            Calling unless entering the priesthood.  Vocation was

            restricted to ecclesiastical callings.  [But] Calvin thought

            that any area of work – farming, teaching, governing,

            business – could be a valid calling from God, every bit as

            sacred as a minister.  This was a radical change in worldview

            . . . He taught that a person could serve God in any labor and

glorify him . . . that all callings are important.

            It’s a thoroughly Calvinist notion – and more important than that, a faithfully Biblical one –  to imagine Zacchaeus returning to his job, knowing now . . .

+ that God cares about what he does and how he does it;

+ that God is glorified or demeaned by his actions and attitudes in the workplace;

+ and that God regards all work as holy work if it is done excellently, ethically, caringly and enthusiastically.

And so we may think of our work, as well.

So, back one last time to our hockey player.  Does God really care about who wins and loses hockey games?  Of course not, Brian Pothier answers.  “You win some, you lose some,” he adds.  It’s all “part of the grand plan of developing and cultivating who you are as a person.”   He’s suggesting that work – what we do and how we do it – is not something set-apart from our spiritual growth, but part of it; it’s an arena in which we reflect and transmit the love of God in Jesus Christ, and are strengthened and supported in that love.

May God bless each of us in our work, so that through it we may be a blessing.

                    I AM LEAVING, I AM LEAVING,

                          BUT THE FIGHTER STILL REMAINS

                                Isaiah 40:1-11      2 Timothy 4:6-8

                                                    Sermon presented on December 7, 2008

Fresh off the presses is a book titled, Paul Simon: Lyrics.  It includes the lyrics of all his songs, from Simon and Garfunkel’s 1964 debut album through this year’s unrecorded songs, almost 400 pages of magnificent, provocative poetry.  Now that I’ve got this book I’ll be preaching from it for the next year or so . . . no, not really, but it’s hard to disagree with the reviewer who wrote that the poetry is so good that Barack Obama’s first act as President should be to declare Paul Simon our national “poet laureate”

            One of my favorites is “The Boxer,” from 1971.  Some of you may remember it.  Many of Simon’s lyrics are filled with angst and despair, but “The Boxer” is hopeful.  Here he tells of a young man who left home and family and came to the city, to make a new life.  But it hasn’t gone well. 

He hasn’t been able to get work: 

Asking only workman’s wages

I come looking for a job

But I get no offers, he sings. 

Without work, he’s forced to live on the streets:

Laying low,

Seeking out the poorer quarters

Where the ragged people go

Looking for the places only they would know. 

People deceive and take advantage of him:

I have squandered my resistance

For a pocketful of mumbles

Such are promises

All lies and jests. 

But he’s too headstrong to heed the wise counsel of others, admitting:

A man hears what he wants to hear

And disregards the rest.

            As another brutal winter descends on the city, he decides to return home.  But though he’s disappointed, he’s not defeated.  He likens himself to a boxer who . . .

Carries the reminders

Of every glove that laid him down

Or cut him till he cried out

In his anger and his shame

“I am leaving, I am leaving,”

But the fighter still remains.

            Like the mythic boxer of his imagination the singer is forced to accept the fact that life in the city hasn’t worked-out the way he’d hoped, so a change has to be made, but though he’s leaving, the spirit lives on, his human spirit outlasts the present setback.  “I am leaving, I am leaving/but the fighter still remains.”  Life may knock me down, but it can’t knock me out.  I stand bloodied but unbowed, humbled but not humiliated.  I’m still in the game.

            In an interview Paul Simon once said he wasn’t sure where exactly the idea for this song came from, but he’d been reading the Bible a lot, and was pretty sure the idea came from there.

            Well, that makes sense to me, because the theme of the song is resilience, and resilience is a central theme of the Bible, start-to-finish.  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the fight,” declares the Apostle Paul (2 Timothy 4:7).   What a bold declaration of resilience in the midst of setbacks.  John Calvin wrote of this verse, that although the Apostle Paul was counted-out by others as defeated and wretched, “he does not rely on the corrupt judgment of others, but on the contrary, with magnanimous courage, he rises above every calamity.”  “I have fought the good fight.”  The fighter still remains.

            Resilience is an important feature of healthy faith and life.  Resilience is the capacity of people to cope positively and recover quickly from adversity, change or misfortune.  Dr. Dennis Charney, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, has been studying resilience for years and is considered a leading expert.  Charney’s research leads him to believe that “religion and spirituality . . . provide a valuble boost toward the building of resilience.”  That’s because faith offers a glimpse of a promising future beyond a difficult present, he proposes.  And thus equipped with hopefulness about the future, the person of faith resists defeat, refuses to give-up, and activates such traits as creativity, optimism, and resourcefulness.

            And resilience is a key theme of Advent.  Hear again statements of hope declared by the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40:

Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God . . .

                        Prepare the way of the Lord . . .

                        The glory of the Lord shall be revealed . . .

                        Lift up your voice with strength . . .

Say, “here is your God . . .”

                        See, the Lord God comes . . .

            Words of hope tumble-out, on-top of one another, offering a glimpse of a promising future beyond a difficult present.  For centuries this hope aroused resilience among the people of God.  And this hope still arouses resilience, as we cope with the world’s madness and mayhem, and with adversity in our own lives, as well.

            The towering and abiding message of Advent is that God promises a future that’s infinitely and eternally better than the past and present.  This promise helps us keep daily problems in perspective, enabling us to bounce back from reversals, mistakes and misfortunes.  And we catch a glimpse of this promised future at Christmas, when we call to mind God’s beauty, God’s peace, and the beauty of God’s peace.

           May we dedicate these days to living from the power of God’s hope, such that our every earthly setback and frustration might yield to the joyful expectation of “the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give . . . to all who have longed for his appearing”  (2 Timothy 4:8).

       COMMIT YOUR WAY TO THE LORD – 3

       Matthew 25:14-30                       Psalm 37:1-9

Sermon presented on November 16, 2008

I’m finding the history of Grand Rapids fascinating.  Many of you probably know this stuff already, but it’s all new to me.  One of the more interesting characters I’ve been reading about was Moses V. Aldrich.  He was born in upstate New York in 1829, and moved to Grand Rapids in 1850, when the city had a population of 2600.  Aldrich was a successful banker, businessman and developer of our city.  He financed and helped design the Flatiron Building, and helped his father-in-law William Ledyard build the Ledyard Building.  He served a term as mayor, before dying in 1879, at the age of 50.

Moses Aldrich was prosperous and generous.  His kindness of heart was well-known, and the charitable work he started and supported, much of it quietly, behind the scenes, was instrumental in the city’s early health and strength.  He insisted that the institution serving indigents change its name from “the poorhouse,” a term he thought demeaning to its residents, and when the county ran out of funds to support it, no matter what its name, he paid for it from his own resources.  He was a good steward.  Having been blessed, he became a blessing.

But the thing about Moses Aldrich I most appreciate is this.  He was happiest, friends recalled, when the circus came to town each year.  He’d arrange for all the city’s kids to get into the big tent, where he would be, a big kid himself — mixing lemonade for the children, passing peanuts, gleefully sharing his abundance with others, while having the time of his life doing it. 

(The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids, by Charles E. Belknap, 1922, pgs. 36-37)

This is a great way to be, don’t you agree — gladly sharing with others, while having the time of your life doing it?  It’s also a holy way, a way commended in Scripture.

The New Testament passage before us today is a parable of Jesus, commonly known as the Parable of the Talents.  It’s a difficult parable to quite figure-out. Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner calls this, Jesus’ “strange, dark, harsh parable.”  And Episcopal writer Phyllis Tickle characterizes it as “one of the most difficult and contrary passages in the whole Bible . . . [filled with] unattractive paradox.”

A prosperous man was leaving town for awhile.  He entrusted various amount of money to each of three servants – five talents to one, two talents to another, one talent to the third.  “Talent” here does not refer to a mental endowment, skill, aptitude or physical ability that a person might have.  Rather, “talent” is an unsatisfactory translation of the Greek word talanta, signifying the largest imaginable unit of currency.   A talent was worth an enormous amount of money, roughly the equivalent of fifteen or twenty years’ wages of a laborer, so the sums entrusted to the financial management of the servants were extravagantly large.  The servant entrusted with the five talents, and the one entrusted with two, invested shrewdly, both doubling the original amounts.  The third servant, however, buried the money, so the talent handed-over to him neither gained nor lost value.  The master of the estate returned.  He summoned the servants and asked each to make an accounting.  He praised the two who’d turned a profit, and rewarded them with positions of greater responsibility.  But to the third he unleashed a torrent of criticism — “You wicked and lazy servant!” – followed by harsh reprisal and punishment.

The parable is puzzling, in several ways.  First:  what kind of master simply leaves for an unspecified period of time, turning vast resources over to servants without specific instructions concerning their use?  Second:  what kind of master praises risk-taking behavior and punishes prudent, sensible, responsible behavior?   And third:  what kind of master insists that the actual destiny of his servants is determined by how they managed the abundant resources entrusted to their care?

            To those of us who have been well-schooled in different principles than these, who believe that discretion is more to be honored more daring, and that it’s better to err on the side of caution than recklessness; for many of us, this parable is hard to understand.  It’s great for the first two servants that they turned a profit.  But were they smart or merely lucky? 

            The beginning of the basketball season calls to mind the movie Hoosiers.  I think Hoosiers is the best sports film ever made.  Maybe Field of Dreams is better.  Slap Shot is great, too.  A League of Their Own.  But I love Hoosiers, about the little high school in Indiana that goes to the state finals, back in the days when all schools, of all sizes, competed in a single Indiana tournament.  The new coach in town, Norman Dale, is committed to playing a disciplined, methodical offense.  5 passes before shooting.  5 passes before a player even thinks about shooting.  Early in the season the players are challenging his authority.  The team comes up-court, pass-pass, shoot, score.  Next possession, one pass, shoot, score.  Next:  the guard crosses mid-court, pulls-up without passing at all, shoot, swish, all net, score.  Coach Dale calls time out.  He’s furious.  The players are surprised that’s he angry, and also amused.  What’s the problem, Coach?  The shots are going in.  But short-term results are not all he’s aiming for.  Short-term success can actually have the negative effect of rewarding careless behavior and subverting long-term goals and purposes.

            Well, the third servant in the parable might have played for Coach Dale in high school.  Don’t we also share these values of prudence, restraint and self-control?  So, why in the parable is he the one condemned, and the risk-takers rewarded?

You can see where this parable is going (can’t you?).  The master is suggestive of  God.  It’s an imperfect comparison, but suggestive.  And we represent his servants; or rather, the servants represent us.  God has called us as His servants, entrusting us with his with vast resources.  And he has granted us freedom to decide what to do with these resources – to risk it all or to play it safe; to be bold or bland, daring or cautious; to shoot or to dribble-and-pass.  What, then, shall we do?  How, then, shall we live?

The teaching of the parable, and the truth declared in all of scripture, is to choose the daring way, to commit your to the Lord.  

That’s the theme of this season’s Stewardship Drive, which ends today – “Commit Your Way to the Lord.”  It’s taken from Psalm 37, verse 5.  “Do not fret,” the Psalm goes-on to counsel, in verses 7.  Do not fret; but rather, “commit your way to the Lord.”

The word “fret” comes from the Old English freton, which means “to eat or devour.”  To fret all the time – that is, to worry, to fear, to fuss or to be anxious and bothered – this will devour you, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.  It’ll eat you up.  A far better way is the way of commitment.  The word “commit” comes from the Middle English comitten, which means “to bring together.”  It’s the same root as the word “mitten.”  A mitten brings all the fingers together.  That’s what it means to be “committed.”  It’s to come together with others in a community, such as a church, with a shared purpose.  And commitment is also for a person to come together with God, in a shared purpose. 

Psalm 37 teaches that we have a choice before us all the time, a choice between fretfulness and commitment.  And the parable advances this idea, portraying the third servant as fretful – “I was afraid,” he admits to the master – while the other servants were committed.

Just think of the joy and gladness one misses by fretting!   Commitment is a better way, better by far.  It’s better, holier, worthier, more fun . . . better in every way.

That’s why we use the word “stewardship” in different ways.  “Stewardship” can refer to a church’s annual fund drive, of course.  Our Stewardship Drive ends today.  Throughout November we’ve been informing you about our needs and wants, and encouraging you to support the church’s witness and work.   Concurrent with the stewardship drive this year, our Project:Identity planning team has been meeting in homes with groups of church members, to receive your ideas about the present and future of Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.  Over 200 members have participated in these gatherings, and a couple more have been added this week to accommodate the growing interest.  You’ll hear a bit more about this at the Congregational Meeting, immediately following worship.  I mention it now in order to highlight that these are exciting times in the life of the church, bristling with new energy and enthusiasm.  Hopefully greater clarity will emerge concerning what God is calling us to do and to be, and greater commitment to living-up to this calling.

And this leads to the other understanding of “stewardship.”  Stewardship is not just about raising money.  It’s about raising Christians.   “Stewardship” signifies a joyful lifestyle, a life of commitment, of daring service and risk-taking action on behalf of Christ.  Stewardship is all about joy and gladness. 

Friday night the Philharmonic shared the stage with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.  The audience, while appreciating the music, may not have known of Ellington’s deep faith, and the importance of faith to his life and work.  Duke Ellington credited his mother with getting him to church, teaching him about God, and inspiring a deep confidence in God’s love and guidance.  In her book, Ellington: A Spiritual Biography, Janna Tull Steed writes that, although Ellington had some bad habits and character flaws, as all Christians do, yet he maintained the faith his mother instilled in him.  He read the Bible regularly while on the road; he kepy reading it “through,” Genesis-to-Revelation.  Prayer was central to his life, as well, and he always wore a cross given to him by his sister.  Ellington composed quite a lot of “religious” music, including Three Sacred Concerts, written late in life, and a number of earlier pieces, including the beloved “Come Sunday,” on which he collaborated with Mahalia Jackson.  But the jazz standards and popular tunes by which he’s better known, some of which were performed at the concert here, were also “religious” in the fullest and most sublime sense of the word, in that Ellington considered all he did, a response to the experience of God’s grace in his life.  He once wrote that, if you know that you are a child of God, then “you are strong and don’t have to worry.”  No fretting there!  He called himself “God’s messenger boy,” believing that God had called him to translate the music of the spheres into inventive jazz idioms and structures that express eternal themes of joy, sadness, reverence, beauty and wonder.  He once composed a piece titled “T.G.T.T.”, for “Too Good to Title,” in praise of a God so amazing that no pronoun is good enough to reference him.  (Christian Century, October 12, 1994)

This is the life of faith.  The life of faith isn’t taking a break from ordinary life occasionally, in order to do something “religious.”  The life of faith is to do all things religiously.  And this is how stewardship is to be understood.  This is how life is to be lived.  Stewardship isn’t about fretting over a budget.  Well, I guess it is, actually.  That’s one way of thinking about stewardship, the way of the third servant, who was fearful and worried about a great many things.   But there’s the better way –  the way of making all of life a response to the experience of God’s grace, the way of joy and gladness.  So let us set aside all fretting; and instead, trusting God to act, let us commit our way to the Lord.

       COMMIT YOUR WAY TO THE LORD – 3

       Matthew 25:14-30                       Psalm 37:1-9

Sermon presented on November 16, 2008

I’m finding the history of Grand Rapids fascinating.  Many of you probably know this stuff already, but it’s all new to me.  One of the more interesting characters I’ve been reading about was Moses V. Aldrich.  He was born in upstate New York in 1829, and moved to Grand Rapids in 1850, when the city had a population of 2600.  Aldrich was a successful banker, businessman and developer of our city.  He financed and helped design the Flatiron Building, and helped his father-in-law William Ledyard build the Ledyard Building.  He served a term as mayor, before dying in 1879, at the age of 50.

Moses Aldrich was prosperous and generous.  His kindness of heart was well-known, and the charitable work he started and supported, much of it quietly, behind the scenes, was instrumental in the city’s early health and strength.  He insisted that the institution serving indigents change its name from “the poorhouse,” a term he thought demeaning to its residents, and when the county ran out of funds to support it, no matter what its name, he paid for it from his own resources.  He was a good steward.  Having been blessed, he became a blessing.

But the thing about Moses Aldrich I most appreciate is this.  He was happiest, friends recalled, when the circus came to town each year.  He’d arrange for all the city’s kids to get into the big tent, where he would be, a big kid himself — mixing lemonade for the children, passing peanuts, gleefully sharing his abundance with others, while having the time of his life doing it. 

(The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids, by Charles E. Belknap, 1922, pgs. 36-37)

This is a great way to be, don’t you agree — gladly sharing with others, while having the time of your life doing it?  It’s also a holy way, a way commended in Scripture.

The New Testament passage before us today is a parable of Jesus, commonly known as the Parable of the Talents.  It’s a difficult parable to quite figure-out. Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner calls this, Jesus’ “strange, dark, harsh parable.”  And Episcopal writer Phyllis Tickle characterizes it as “one of the most difficult and contrary passages in the whole Bible . . . [filled with] unattractive paradox.”

A prosperous man was leaving town for awhile.  He entrusted various amount of money to each of three servants – five talents to one, two talents to another, one talent to the third.  “Talent” here does not refer to a mental endowment, skill, aptitude or physical ability that a person might have.  Rather, “talent” is an unsatisfactory translation of the Greek word talanta, signifying the largest imaginable unit of currency.   A talent was worth an enormous amount of money, roughly the equivalent of fifteen or twenty years’ wages of a laborer, so the sums entrusted to the financial management of the servants were extravagantly large.  The servant entrusted with the five talents, and the one entrusted with two, invested shrewdly, both doubling the original amounts.  The third servant, however, buried the money, so the talent handed-over to him neither gained nor lost value.  The master of the estate returned.  He summoned the servants and asked each to make an accounting.  He praised the two who’d turned a profit, and rewarded them with positions of greater responsibility.  But to the third he unleashed a torrent of criticism — “You wicked and lazy servant!” – followed by harsh reprisal and punishment.

The parable is puzzling, in several ways.  First:  what kind of master simply leaves for an unspecified period of time, turning vast resources over to servants without specific instructions concerning their use?  Second:  what kind of master praises risk-taking behavior and punishes prudent, sensible, responsible behavior?   And third:  what kind of master insists that the actual destiny of his servants is determined by how they managed the abundant resources entrusted to their care?

            To those of us who have been well-schooled in different principles than these, who believe that discretion is more to be honored more daring, and that it’s better to err on the side of caution than recklessness; for many of us, this parable is hard to understand.  It’s great for the first two servants that they turned a profit.  But were they smart or merely lucky? 

            The beginning of the basketball season calls to mind the movie Hoosiers.  I think Hoosiers is the best sports film ever made.  Maybe Field of Dreams is better.  Slap Shot is great, too.  A League of Their Own.  But I love Hoosiers, about the little high school in Indiana that goes to the state finals, back in the days when all schools, of all sizes, competed in a single Indiana tournament.  The new coach in town, Norman Dale, is committed to playing a disciplined, methodical offense.  5 passes before shooting.  5 passes before a player even thinks about shooting.  Early in the season the players are challenging his authority.  The team comes up-court, pass-pass, shoot, score.  Next possession, one pass, shoot, score.  Next:  the guard crosses mid-court, pulls-up without passing at all, shoot, swish, all net, score.  Coach Dale calls time out.  He’s furious.  The players are surprised that’s he angry, and also amused.  What’s the problem, Coach?  The shots are going in.  But short-term results are not all he’s aiming for.  Short-term success can actually have the negative effect of rewarding careless behavior and subverting long-term goals and purposes.

            Well, the third servant in the parable might have played for Coach Dale in high school.  Don’t we also share these values of prudence, restraint and self-control?  So, why in the parable is he the one condemned, and the risk-takers rewarded?

You can see where this parable is going (can’t you?).  The master is suggestive of  God.  It’s an imperfect comparison, but suggestive.  And we represent his servants; or rather, the servants represent us.  God has called us as His servants, entrusting us with his with vast resources.  And he has granted us freedom to decide what to do with these resources – to risk it all or to play it safe; to be bold or bland, daring or cautious; to shoot or to dribble-and-pass.  What, then, shall we do?  How, then, shall we live?

The teaching of the parable, and the truth declared in all of scripture, is to choose the daring way, to commit your to the Lord.  

That’s the theme of this season’s Stewardship Drive, which ends today – “Commit Your Way to the Lord.”  It’s taken from Psalm 37, verse 5.  “Do not fret,” the Psalm goes-on to counsel, in verses 7.  Do not fret; but rather, “commit your way to the Lord.”

The word “fret” comes from the Old English freton, which means “to eat or devour.”  To fret all the time – that is, to worry, to fear, to fuss or to be anxious and bothered – this will devour you, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.  It’ll eat you up.  A far better way is the way of commitment.  The word “commit” comes from the Middle English comitten, which means “to bring together.”  It’s the same root as the word “mitten.”  A mitten brings all the fingers together.  That’s what it means to be “committed.”  It’s to come together with others in a community, such as a church, with a shared purpose.  And commitment is also for a person to come together with God, in a shared purpose. 

Psalm 37 teaches that we have a choice before us all the time, a choice between fretfulness and commitment.  And the parable advances this idea, portraying the third servant as fretful – “I was afraid,” he admits to the master – while the other servants were committed.

Just think of the joy and gladness one misses by fretting!   Commitment is a better way, better by far.  It’s better, holier, worthier, more fun . . . better in every way.

That’s why we use the word “stewardship” in different ways.  “Stewardship” can refer to a church’s annual fund drive, of course.  Our Stewardship Drive ends today.  Throughout November we’ve been informing you about our needs and wants, and encouraging you to support the church’s witness and work.   Concurrent with the stewardship drive this year, our Project:Identity planning team has been meeting in homes with groups of church members, to receive your ideas about the present and future of Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.  Over 200 members have participated in these gatherings, and a couple more have been added this week to accommodate the growing interest.  You’ll hear a bit more about this at the Congregational Meeting, immediately following worship.  I mention it now in order to highlight that these are exciting times in the life of the church, bristling with new energy and enthusiasm.  Hopefully greater clarity will emerge concerning what God is calling us to do and to be, and greater commitment to living-up to this calling.

And this leads to the other understanding of “stewardship.”  Stewardship is not just about raising money.  It’s about raising Christians.   “Stewardship” signifies a joyful lifestyle, a life of commitment, of daring service and risk-taking action on behalf of Christ.  Stewardship is all about joy and gladness. 

Friday night the Philharmonic shared the stage with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. 

The audience, while appreciating the music, may not have known of Ellington’s deep faith, and the importance of faith to his life and work.  Duke Ellington credited his mother with getting him to church, teaching him about God, and inspiring a deep confidence in God’s love and guidance.  In her book, Ellington: A Spiritual Biography, Janna Tull Steed writes that, although Ellington had some bad habits and character flaws, as all Christians do, yet he maintained the faith his mother instilled in him.  He read the Bible regularly while on the road; he kepy reading it “through,” Genesis-to-Revelation.  Prayer was central to his life, as well, and he always wore a cross given to him by his sister.  Ellington composed quite a lot of “religious” music, including Three Sacred Concerts, written late in life, and a number of earlier pieces, including the beloved “Come Sunday,” on which he collaborated with Mahalia Jackson.  But the jazz standards and popular tunes by which he’s better known, some of which were performed at the concert here, were also “religious” in the fullest and most sublime sense of the word, in that Ellington considered all he did, a response to the experience of God’s grace in his life.  He once wrote that, if you know that you are a child of God, then “you are strong and don’t have to worry.”  No fretting there!  He called himself “God’s messenger boy,” believing that God had called him to translate the music of the spheres into inventive jazz idioms and structures that express eternal themes of joy, sadness, reverence, beauty and wonder.  He once composed a piece titled “T.G.T.T.”, for “Too Good to Title,” in praise of a God so amazing that no pronoun is good enough to reference him.    (Christian Century, October 12, 1994)

This is the life of faith.  The life of faith isn’t taking a break from ordinary life occasionally, in order to do something “religious.”  The life of faith is to do all things religiously.  And this is how stewardship is to be understood.  This is how life is to be lived.  Stewardship isn’t about fretting over a budget.  Well, I guess it is, actually.  That’s one way of thinking about stewardship, the way of the third servant, who was fearful and worried about a great many things.   But there’s the better way –  the way of making all of life a response to the experience of God’s grace, the way of joy and gladness.  So let us set aside all fretting; and instead, trusting God to act, let us commit our way to the Lord.