Hope in the Midst of Privilege

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Luke 3:7-18

Penitence and preparation are never easy. Many long years ago, Advent was a penitential season. That is, it was to be a time of self-examination, confession, fasting, to both purse the sinfulness that clings so closely to us and to heighten the realization of the absolute need that humanity has for the Savior whose birth celebration was immanent. The problem with all this crepe-hanging, woe-is-me, self-flogging is that it is a real downer. A person can kick themselves in the seat of their britches only so much. There needs to be sense that there is an approaching end to all the sackcloth and ashes. So the third Sunday of Advent became the joy Sunday, a break in the gloom and doom, a breath of fresh air to get us to the celebration. You noticed I hope that today’s Advent Candle is pink. Pink is a happy color, I suppose. Especially compared to the penitential purple.

Our word from the prophet today begins with the command to rejoice. Have joy. Raise the rafters, be happy, celebrate. The prophets message was one of hope, of promise; it was a lightening of the grief in which the people had been or would soon be living. Those were dark times. A foreign power was sweeping through Israel and Judah, rending families, decimating crops, removing leaders, destroying culture. Fear was the predominant emotion. Hope was in short supply. Joy was non-existent.

Here’s a question for you: What does hope look like? How would you describe it? How might you paint a picture of it? If you had to come up with a universal symbol, a kind of catch-all image for this universal experience and feeling that we call hope, what would it be?

Is it a mother holding her newborn child? That has to be joy, hope, promise. What about the shout of a fan when his team finally wins it all, like the Boston Red Sox breaking their curse and winning the World Series? Hope keeps the people coming to Wrigley Field. Some day, in somebody’s lifetime, the Cubs will win the big one. With three major league sports teams, Cleveland has been waiting since 1964 for one of them to take the trophy.

Hope is tough to explain and difficult to put into words, yet, when you see it, it’s unmistakable and when you feel it, it’s unforgettable. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all felt it. So again, how might you describe this thing called hope? What would you say is the symbol of hope?

Zephaniah gives us some symbols as he tells of God’s future activity.

Watch what I am about to do to all your oppressors at that time.
I will deliver the lame;
I will gather the outcast.
I will change their shame into praise and fame throughout the earth.
At that time, I will bring all of you back,
at the time when I gather you.
I will give you fame and praise among all the neighboring peoples
when I restore your possessions and you can see them—says the LORD. 

Zephaniah is acutely aware of the corruption and injustice perpetrated by Judah’s leaders. Right up to an admonition to “wait” several verses before today’s speech, Zephaniah laid out line by line the details of the spiritual and political oppression perpetrated by Judah’s leaders. The prophet pulls no punches about God's impending punishment: destruction. As a result of the social injustice, the oppressed are fearful and ashamed, while the powerful are haughty and corrupt and totally oblivious to the coming divine correction.

Zephaniah gives us a foretaste of the words which Mary will utter to Elizabeth in what we have come to call “The Magnificat”:

He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.
He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed.(Luke 1:51-53)

As we prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, both the context and the content of the prophet’s words challenge us to remember the character of God's continuing and living promise to protect and exalt the lowly. The prophetic word affirms that God's purposes are to make right systems of injustice, to heal the shame that results from oppression.

All that is difficult for us to understand and process. We aren’t oppressed. Things may not go the way we would like, be we are far from being victims of injustice. And in spite of what the folks seeking nominations for President, we are not overrun, we are not subjugated, we are not in chains. We have roofs over our heads, chickens in our pots, dollars in our piggy banks, honor in our names, dignity in our lives. So how can we imagine hope in the midst of our privilege?

We hope because we are privileged. We hope because we know the message that the prophet gives, even though it may seem to be far from accessible right now. We hope because we have faith in God who cries out against the sins of greed, self-centeredness, falsehood, and fear. How many times has the message from God been, “Do not fear, do not be afraid”?

Fear is a sin. Fear is a sin because to distrusts the righteousness, the purpose, the love, the grace of God. Fear is being ladled out generously by so many people. Some are filled with hatred. Some are filled with ignorance. Some are filled greed. Some are filled with fear and don’t want to be alone in it.

Fear is a desiccant. It dries up joy, hope, love, and peace. It destroys relationships between people as well as the relationship God desires to have with us. Fear builds walls, fear digs bunkers, fear arms itself to the teeth, fear skews rational thinking. Fear says that I am inadequate unless I have more than someone else. Fear says that I am inadequate unless I have more power than someone else.

Fear is rampaging  throughout the world. It is promoted by the Boko Haram of West Africa, by ISIL in the Middle East, by armed communities dotting our country. Fear destroys. Fear of not knowing everything destroyed the relationship between God and our first ancestors.

"Do not fear" is not a plea, but a declaration. Luke uses it to instill confidence in unsuspecting recipients of God's news: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah,” “Don’t be afraid, Mary.” Later in the story we will hear, “Do not be afraid… I bring good news to you.” Another Gospel proclaims at its end, “Don’t be afraid… He isn’t here, because he’s been raised” (Matt. 28:5-6).

God’s promise is universal. God’s promised messianic kingdom and restoration of fortunes are not just for us, our challenges, and our privilege. God’s promises are for the whole world. In Gods messianic kingdom, oppressors will be dealt with (v. 19), because there will be no oppressed and no oppressors. In God's messianic kingdom, all the lame and the outcast will be restored. There will no “in groups” and “out groups,” there will be no favored nations and unfavored nations. There will be no scattered nations and refugees, for all of God’s people will be brought home and gathered (v. 20).

Our privilege brings responsibility. We do not experience extreme deprivation or shame, but because we love the world, we listen to that pain in the peoples of other nations and other classes. Then, informed and compassionate, we can pray in solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world who do experience the world in ways much more like the experience of Zephaniah's hearers. We pray for an end to all disasters and conflicts, and we trust in God's promise for restoration. And when the opportunity presents itself, we allow God to use us move the kingdom forward, one act of gracious kindness at a time.

God's promise is for us. At the end of the day, once we have recognized the differences between our own fears and the fears originally addressed by Zephaniah, we can say that God will banish our fears as well. God will ultimately bring an end to our pain and our suffering, whatever nature that pain and suffering take.

So what does hope look like? It looks like Jesus, born in a foreign territory, placed in a feeding trough instead of a bassinet, forced to be a refugee while still an infant, run out of his adopted town because he dared to speak to and for God, recognized by sinners and repulsed by the self-proclaimed sinless, crucified, raised, and reigning. We are privileged to hope in him.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Whose Messenger Are You? (And What Message Are You Announcing?)

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6; Philippians 1:3-11

Look, I am sending my messenger who will clear the path before me;
suddenly the Lord whom you are seeking will come to his temple.
The messenger of the covenant in whom you take delight is coming,
        says the Lord of heavenly forces.
Who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can withstand his appearance?

Those verses sum up Advent. They are rife with the tension of anticipation and apprehension. We haven’t lost that wide-eyed childhood glee for the approach of Christ’s birthday celebration. Yet it is in a life-and-death fight with our life experience that tells us that not everything will be like we expect it to be. If God really comes as God has promised, the impact on our lives will be major. “Who can endure the day of his coming?”  Not any of us.

And yet, here we are, pledging our loyalty, our faith, our very spirits to the reality that God has a plan for Creation, a plan for our prosperity. But the truth of the matter is that what we tell children about Santa Claus watching out for naughty and nice, if it applied to us, would make things pretty dicey for us when Christ appears. Malachi’s message applies to both the first coming of Christ – his birth as well as his three-year ministry – and his second coming at the culmination of Creation.

Malachi didn’t lay out a simple responsibility for his hearers. The message is magnified and perpetuated through the work of Christ. Remember the words in Acts 1 with which the risen Jesus commissioned his disciples at the close of his earthly ministry and post-resurrection appearance: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The work of the messenger has been laid on the people who would follow after Christ. You and I are in that great relay of witnesses.

I had an old AM radio in my room when I was growing up. It had a small, round, lighted dial and a knob to turn to tune in the stations. It took a lot of work to get a more distant station to come in clearly. Just the slightest twist of the tuning knob could get a clear signal or miss it in a roar of static. The static sometimes happened because there were signals from several radio stations on the same frequency trying to be tuned in at the same time. It wasn’t until I studied physics in high school that I learned how and why static existed.

We live in a world that is full of static. Malachi, along with his fellow prophets, understood that in their day. The hereditary priests and Levites connected with the Temple were saying one thing about God. And the prophets whom God appointed from outside the Temple institution spoke a different thing about God. Everyone spoke about God, but it was like the different radio stations trying to come in on the same frequency. All the people heard was static.

Our radios have improved a lot. With digital tuning, there isn’t any fiddling with the dial. Extraneous and weak signals are ignored. That’s not the case with our lives. The static is still there – in the church, in the world. The messages are fighting with each other as they try to be heard in the midst of every other message. The result is that no single message is getting through.

The refiner’s fire and cleaner’s soap is desperately needed. There needs to be honest reflection on our church and our broader society. What might be refined and purified in God’s promised refining fire? When God’s promise, spoken through Malachi, is finally fulfilled, what will look different in our church? our world? our lives? But before we start to attack enemies or to point out all the things that some imagined “they” are doing wrong, we need to pause and examine ourselves purposefully. We don’t get to escape the divine smelting. We are going to be refined along with all the people we think need it. We are in need of refining.(1)

The prophet calls us to look inside. Look inside ourselves, each of us. Then to look inside our congregation, then our community. What will God’s refining look like? Perhaps the faces in our pews will reflect the rainbow of pigmentation in God’s world more than they do now. Perhaps there will be young as well as old. Perhaps there will be no high cost cars in the parking lot and more beds for the homeless. Perhaps there will be hours of prayer and minutes of meetings rather than minutes of prayer and hours of meetings.

What will our worship and our stewardship look like if “the offering of Judah and Jerusalem [and Chicago and Little Rock and Phoenix and First Presbyterian and New Covenant and St. Mary’s Churches] will be pleasing to the Lord”?

Malachi challenges us to a very different kind of preparation than hanging tinsel, ladling eggnog, and singing carols. Like John the Baptist, the prophet challenges us to look at our lives, our values, our priorities. John’s message of repentance cannot be avoided. John and the prophets of Advent challenge us to recognize that we have been doing things after a wrong life message and must choose to make a radical change in our lives. That’s an impossible task for us by ourselves, but possible with the working of the Spirit in us.

Like the Advent prophets John confronts us, commands our attention, and demands our responses. John’s challenge is to repent and prepare. True repentance means literally, to change one’s mind, turn around, reorient oneself, or to use Malachi’s word, to be refined.(2)

So what is your message? Is about calling God a handyman who can fix everything? Does it describe God as a kind of benevolent grandparent who let’s you get away with things? Is it picturing God as kind of cosmic ATM handing out whatever you want? Does it make God into a cruel and impossible taskmaster ready to crush life out of people? Is it crying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace? Is it the message that appeared on the front page of the New York Post this week following the shooting rampage in San Bernardino: “God Isn’t Fixing This.”

The real message is that God did not will this massacre. Death is an interloper and is not God’s will. The one who hates this violence more than we do is God.

And the real message is that God is in the agony of innocent lives lost. God knows what it is to lose a son. God was with each of those wounded and killed. None of us can say how, or if they knew it, or believed it, or cared. But from the perspective of the Christian faith there is no such thing as a God-forsaken person. When evil intentions enter a room and snuff out life, what they don’t snuff out is the God of life who abides with those in the room more intimately that we can imagine. St. Augustine taught us that God is closer to us that we are to ourselves. Psalm 139 teaches us that we cannot escape God’s loving presence. Nothing can change that.

And the real message is that God wants us to join with God in the community to speak truth to power, as the prophets of old did, as John the Baptist did, as Jesus did, as Peter and Paul did, as the 16th century Reformers did, as the faithful have done across the ages.

In Advent, Christians prepare to celebrate the deepest mystery of our faith – the Incarnation, God’s unique union with humanity in the person of Jesus. Among other things, Incarnation means God is still with humanity and works through humanity. At Christmas we will be remembering that God came as a weak, vulnerable child into our world.(3)

John the Baptist is to us a great prophet who prepared the way for Jesus, but compared with the political and religious leaders of his day, he was just an ordinary guy. Yet God chose John, and not the luminaries of his time, to be the messenger. God sent the message to John, not in Rome, not in Jerusalem, but out in the wilderness. Not the seat of political or religious power, but the wilderness, the often scary and confusing place where God had spoken to God’s people in the past and through which God had led God’s people to a new and promised life. God’s choice of John and where God spoke to John are indications of what God expects from us. Our repentance, our turning around, will likely involve us looking at the structures and the systems and the people of the world around us in new and different ways.(4)

Whose messenger are you? And what message are you announcing? John wants to know. Malachi wants to know. God wants to know.

(1) Seth Moland-Kovash, “Malachi 3:1-6 Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 1, 29, 31.
(2) Kathy Beach Verhey, “Luke 3:1-6 Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting, op. cit., 47, 49.
(3) “God Isn’t Fixing This,” Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens, associate professor of leadership and ministry, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, PTSBlog, Ministry/Theological Reflection, http://www.pts.edu/blog/god-isnt-fixing-this 
(4) Verhey, op. cit., 49.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Life in a Minor Key

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36; Psalm 25

Happy New Year!

I know. There isn’t any Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians playing “Auld Lang Syne.” There isn’t Dick Clark counting down to the ball drop at Times Square.

But it’s still the new year. Our new year. The Church’s new year. God gives the church the opportunity to be ahead of the curve. We don’t live in a dream world. We live in a reality that is, but is not yet. Rather than the world’s bombastic major key, we live our lives in a minor key because we know what life is about.

Our year begins with expectation and waiting in the midst of despair. It then moves to the incarnated presence of the one who was promised, who was born not in the pomp and grandeur of a Pollyannaish world, but in a real world where immigrants and aliens constantly cross borders and where racism, ethnicism, sexism, ageism, and all manner of other “isms,” ideologies, and idolatries are the order of the day, where oppression is the only game in town, where lies and half-truths are a way of life, where violence reigns, and where hope is bombed to smithereens.

The underdog survives in spite of the machinations of the powers that be. A calling is fulfilled, a ministry is begun and carried out. The vengeful response of those who cowered in his spiritual shadow results in his arrest and execution. Death does not triumph. Resurrection breaks out. A spirit empowers a people to persevere in readiness for the final consummation of God’s plan for creation.

That’s our year. It begins today.

We are caught in a time warp. The world is in a headlong rush for the manger: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday. But the church recognizes that there has to be a time of preparation, a pregnancy so that speak. On Christmas Eve we will read the familiar words from Luke, “when Quirinius governed Syria,” and be back in the historical context of Jesus’ birth. But on this First Sunday of Advent, Jeremiah turns us forward to the future: “In those days and at that time.…”

In these days of Advent the future is not where our culture forcefully moves us. We resist a time that is nostalgic and immediate. Rather we hear the prophetic word, “In those days and at that time” God will decree justice and righteousness. Our culture encourages us to pass “Go” and to head for the finish line, sure that consumerism will deliver our fulfillment. But as a Facebook meme posted on Thanksgiving Day said, “If you are not  content today, there is nothing you can buy this weekend to change that.”

The church is called to hear the prophets in this season, not for some “once upon a time” background music, but for an overture playing in real time, sounding themes to be developed going forward. “In those days” there will be “justice and righteousness,” peace and security.(1) Next week Malachi will pick up the tune of righteousness with the messenger who will be like a refiner’s fire (Malachi 3:1-4). On the third Sunday of Advent Zephaniah will declare that “the Lord is in [our] midst” (Zephaniah 3:17). Advent will end with Mary singing of God’s justice (Luke 1:50-56). The church may light its Advent candles to prepare for hope, peace, joy, and love, but the prophets resoundingly cry justice and righteousness.

In Matthew’s Gospel, “righteousness” is Jesus’ first word, spoken to John the Baptist: “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). Righteousness is not an attitude or an absolute standard. It refers to conduct in accord with God’s purposes. It is doing the good thing and the God thing: right-doing as opposed to wrong-doing, and doing as opposed to being. Self-righteousness is the inflated ego of self-approval; righteousness is the humble ethic of living toward others in just and loving relationships.(2)

It’s the absence of that humble ethic that Jeremiah decries. If we stop with the last word of the prophet in the reading, “The Lord is our righteousness,” we might think that the rush to Christmas is all right. But Jeremiah is not so blasé. He continues, “The Lord proclaims, ‘I would no sooner break my covenant with day and night or the laws of heaven and earth than I would reject the descendants of Jacob and my servant David and his descendants as rulers for the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will restore the captives and have compassion on them’” (Jeremiah 33:26).

This is not a free pass to salvation. Jeremiah’s audience is a people either facing impending exile or already suffering in it. Jeremiah offers that people a vision of a radically new way that their political and religious institutions will work in the future. A new generation of Davidic kings will act in ways that promote justice and righteousness, rather than exploitation, self-promotion, and violence. Even the Levitical priesthood will live according to the Sinai covenant, rather than continue their insistence on their own orthodoxies at the expense of inclusion, justice, and righteousness in faith and religious observance. Both king and priest someday may embody and lead the way into God’s bright new reality.

The biblical stories of Advent are not childhood favorites. There is no star in the east guiding devout magi, no choir of angels urging shepherds to go and see the babe, no harried innkeeper, no Hallmark moment of Mary pondering these things in her heart. Advent stories are dug from the harsh soil of human struggle and the littered landscape of dashed dreams. They are told from the reality that sin still reigns supreme and hope has gone on vacation. Advent is life in a minor key.

Advent is not a steady, rhythmic kind of time, a persistent drumbeat of day after day, year after year. Advent is unpredictable time, unsteady time. In this time-tumbling season, we look for a baby to be born while we know that the baby has already been born, and still is being born in us – this Emmanuel who came and is coming and is among us right now.

Advent is not well behaved, neat, decent, and orderly; it contorts time. Given the nature of Advent, it is no surprise that Jeremiah is its herald. Jeremiah speaks to hostages being seduced to start a new life in balmy Babylon. He tells a tough audience that, despite every sign to the contrary, “the time is coming,” time when God’s promises will be fulfilled. Jeremiah tells his kin that God’s future will come not by giving up on God’s promises and making the best of a bad situation – after all, “when in Babylon...” – but by trusting in the creative and redemptive and sure purposes of God: “The time is coming!”(3)

Heidi Neumark, a Lutheran pastor in the Bronx, writes:

Probably the reason I love Advent so much is that it is a reflection of how I feel most of the time. I might not feel sorry during Lent, when the liturgical calendar begs repentance. I might not feel victorious, even though it is Easter morning. I might not feel full of the Spirit, even though it is Pentecost and the liturgy spins out fiery gusts of ecstasy. But during Advent, I am always in sync with the season.
Advent unfailingly embraces and comprehends my reality. And what is that? I think of the Spanish word anhelo, or longing. Advent is when the church can no longer contain its unfulfilled desire and the cry of anhelo bursts forth: Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus! O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!(4) 

The church longs for the days when there will be no immigrants, no refugees, no threat of walls or jingoistic exclusion, no internment because of fear based on perceptions of racial, ethnic, or national differences, no political rancor, no egotistical puffery, no despotism, no religious one-up-man-ship, no greed, no taught and learned hatred. The church longs for the final fulfillment of the created order that God began on those six epochal days so long ago.

“The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill my gracious promise.... In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David's line, who will do what is just and right in the land.... And this is what he will be called: The Lord Is Our Righteousness.”

Until then, our life is in a minor key. Thanks be to God. Come, Lord Jesus. O come, O come, Emmanuel.

(1) Deborah A. Block, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, vol.1, 2.
(2) Ibid., 6.
(3) Gary W. Charles, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting, op. cit., 3-5.
(4) Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 211.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Wait for It

Mark 13:1-8; Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25

There isn’t one of us who hasn’t been betrayed sometime. If not by an individual then by the circumstances of a situation. Betrayal brings loss. It shakes the underpinnings of a relationship or the security of long-held ideas. We fear loss more than anything else. When we lose surety and certainty we lose innocence. We no longer have the sense that everything will be all right.

That’s why change is so hard. We seem to be wired to react emotionally to a loss, however small, as if the whole world were caving in, even though the objective reality is that much remains unchanged and some of the change is improvement. What has been solid foundation turns into quicksand. Foundational beliefs twist and bend like limp linguini. It is as if God is no longer in the heavens and hence nothing is right with the world.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats expressed that this way in his poem, “The Second Coming”:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”(1)

That’s where the disciples were that afternoon as they were leaving Jerusalem. The vortex of dissonant despair was widening at an alarming rate. Jesus had kept telling them that this was to be his last visit to Jerusalem, that his immanent death would be necessary, ignominious, and ennobling. No matter how many times he told them, they couldn’t grasp the gravity, intensity, and divine purpose of it all.

And now he told them that the Temple itself would one day be destroyed. The Temple was the architectural wonder of the city. It was made with massive stones and sat on the highest promontory where it could seen from any direction. The Temple was the pride and joy of the people, the symbol of their identity, and the source of their cultural strength. It was their all in all.

First Jesus and his powerful message, then the Temple. What was going to become of their world? What was going to become of them?

We think that things are permanent. We look at ancient architectural wonders like Stonehenge, the pyramids, Peru’s Macchu Picchu, Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, and at abbeys and cathedrals which have stood for centuries. Things are supposed to last. And most of us have been well-trained to use things until they can’t be used any more.

Yet the notion of lasting is sometimes our downfall. Things used beyond their life expectancy or viability can be a liability not an asset. Things need to be replaced. For example, all along Route 23 in Circleville, a major power line is being replaced. Who knows how old the cables are and how long some of the old utility poles have been there. Some old poles are as bent with age as we are. Our power grid is technologically ancient.

We can’t keep up with replacing bridges that are tired and overused. Some of our cities are underlaid with water pipes that are more than a century old.

We don’t think about those things until something goes wrong: a transformer blows up, a gas line explodes, a bridge collapses, a dam breaks. And then we are shaken. Those things aren’t supposed to happen.

Every tragedy, whether it is an infrastructure failure through material fatigue or whether it is the result of human negligence or malevolence, brings forth a rise in indignation and a call for reform. Too often the hue and cry is hot and short. Anger and frustration are quickly vented and very little changes. All the mass shootings in schools and public places have changed few opinions about the right to be armed to the teeth. As a nation we spend billions of dollars on equipping military personnel and feel resentful when veterans demand quality medical services in their post-service life. Righteous anger calls for change now and then moves on to some other topic while little happens.

We are left wondering: Why bother? If no one cares, why should we? As we disconnect with the reality of the present, we enter a future fantasy land. Everything will be all right, by and by. Instead of working now to do something, we let everything slide, or as the current vernacular puts it, we kick the can down the road. If God is going to fix everything, that’s God’s problem and God’s schedule.

Yet we can’t help wanting it to happen soon. We become gullible about quick fixes. There must be a program that will work, some kit of ideas that we can put together that will end poverty, stop the warfare, fill the churches, lower taxes, improve the services, educate the youth, make medicine easier, save our physical, emotional, spiritual lives.

Circus man P. T. Barnum also ran a museum, something on the order of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not.” The story is told that because the crowds lingered at the displays, Barnum placed signs along the way saying, “This way to the Egress.” People thought that it was another fanciful display. They went through the door labeled “Egress” and found that they had exited the museum. No wonder a sucker was born every minute.

We are always looking for the next and better thing. There’s a science for that; it’s called marketing. Jesus knew about that. He warned the disciples that many people would come in his name and that they would deceive many people. It’s that quick fix syndrome. “Kiss it and make it better,” we asked our mothers. Only the problems of the world can’t be kiss-fixed. We saw that again on Friday in the horrendous attacks in Paris. The ills of the world cannot be fixed with bombs or mass shootings. The results of a mass bombing cannot be fixed with a bigger bomb or with denial.

There are no easy ways. As Jesus told the disciples on another occasion, “Go in through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to destruction is broad and the road wide, so many people enter through it. But the gate that leads to life is narrow and the road difficult, so few people find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

Jesus prepared his disciples for the difficult years ahead. He warned them about false messiahs, natural disasters, and persecutions. But he also assured them that he would be with them to protect them and make his kingdom known through them. Jesus promised that, in the end, he would return in power and glory to save them. Jesus' warnings and promises to his disciples also apply to us as we look forward to his return: We must be ready; we must continue to proclaim the gospel; we must endure great trials; we must wait patiently.(2)

Jesus warned his followers about the future so that they could learn how to live in the present. Jesus did not make these predictions so that we would guess when they might be fulfilled, but to help us remain spiritually alert and prepared at all times as we wait for his return. We must live each day close to Christ, always mindful that God is in charge of the timetable.(3)

Our focus must not be on the signs. We must focus on the one who is to come—the one who enables us to look up after horrific devastation and claim the sure and certain hope that God is redeeming the world, even if we don’t know when. A saying that has been making the rounds for a while now is this: “Everything will be okay in the end. If everything is not okay, it is not yet the end.” That is our faith statement. The end is in God’s control.

Lamar Williamson in his commentary on Mark notes that each of the gospel writers leaves the church with a challenge. John calls the church to love one another. Matthew and Luke call the church to engage in mission to the Gentiles, to those who are “other.” As daunting as those challenges are, you and I, along with every other North American Christian steeped in the religion of instant gratification, are challenged by Mark: “Beware, . . . keep awake,” watch, resist, hold out for the coming of Son of Man.(4) God knows when the best time will be. We have to wait for it.

(1) The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, revised second edition, ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner Paperback Poetry, 1996), 200.
(2) Life Application Bible Commentary, "Mark" (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 369.
(3) Ibid., 373.
(4) Lamar Williamson Jr., Mark, Interpretation Series (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983), 238.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

A Good Foundation for the Future

1 Timothy 6:17-19; John 11:32-44; Revelation 21:1-6a

How far can you see? Looking out our windows today, not too far. To the tree line along the road or to the homes on the other side. If we were in a great flat expanse, on a clear day we could see for about fifteen miles. That’s because of the curvature of the earth. If we could be raised high above the plain, we could see farther. From the top of a mountain the view seems to go on forever.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we can see forever – spiritually. That’s what the vision of John of Patmos is all about. He sees forever until that day when creation is made full, final, and complete. He “saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away.” We can see that far, too, although the view is indistinct, like looking through frosted glass. Our faith tells us that that is what we are seeing, even if we can’t fully make it out.

How can we see that far? Because we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before in the faith of Christ. Think about that. If a new generation comes along every twenty years, then in the two thousand years since the resurrection of Jesus, there have been about 100 generations. You are the 98th generation, your children the 99th, your grandchildren the 100th, and your great-grandchildren the 101st  generation after Christ. If we were literally standing on each other’s shoulders, then you would be standing abut 485 feet above the floor. That might be the 40th floor of a building. That’s taller than any building in Columbus.

To build a building that tall, it takes a strong foundation. The foundations of skyscrapers go a number of floors deep into the earth to reach bedrock. The foundation walls are very thick and reinforced. There are huge girders and beams to support the weight of all that rises above the foundation. Because of all the weight of the building, the upper floors are often smaller than the lower floors. Think of the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco which is a tall, slim pyramid. 

We have to build things with bigger bases than tops in order to support the weight. God doesn’t follow human construction rules. The church is an inverted pyramid. It rests on its point and gets bigger as it rises. 

Think about that theologically. What does the hymn say? “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” Peter in his first letter quotes Isaiah: “Thus it is written in scripture, ‘Look! I am laying a cornerstone in Zion, chosen, valuable. The person who believes in him will never be shamed’” (1 Peter 2:6). Every succeeding generation following Christ’s resurrection has been built on the previous generation and has expanded the number of believers. Thus the Church grows and gets bigger generation after generation, layer upon layer of believers standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

Shortly we will remember some of the believers on whose shoulders we stand. And on some future All Saints’ Day the generations which come after us will remember us and give thanks for the strength of our shoulders which enabled them to stand tall and firm in the faith. 

Timothy wrote his readers about saving a treasure which would be a good foundation for the future. There is an integral connection between treasure and foundation and future. Just as a building cannot come to be if there is no foundation, so the future requires a foundation. Our future is dependent on Jesus Christ, the strong foundation, the solid rock on which the whole church rises. 

Jesus is not only our foundation, he is our future. All things of creation were made through him and with him and for him. As the new heaven and new earth come into being, it is Jesus who is the core of the new creation. Everything comes from him and everything will return to him.

Jesus is not only our foundation and our future, he is our treasure. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his listeners, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19). As people who have received much – the grace of life abundant and eternal through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – much is expected. Believers, having the treasure of Christ, lay up treasures in heaven. They invest their riches – their faith in the one Lord – for eternity. This kind of investment includes tithing and giving offerings in church but is much broader. Any unselfish giving to meet the needs of others, especially the poor, creates a deposit in eternity. 

When Paul speaks of the treasure “that is a good foundation,” he’s playing with his words. In his theology your treasure is your foundation and vice-versa. Your treasure is the place where your life’s efforts and meaning are founded. Your life’s foundation consists not of the treasure you possess but the treasure you bestow in the form of blessing, generosity, good works. 

We could play with the idea still further and say that your one true foundation, the site of your most authentic, divinely envisioned life, lies in the masonry of blessings God gave into the world with your life. The mortar of the Gospel is what cements us firmly to the generation that preceded us and which handed the gospel of salvation in Christ to us. So blessed and so fixed in the saving grace of Christ means that not a one of us is poor, and all are treasured.

Today’s masonry buildings are built with blocks of uniform size and composition. Before concrete blocks were invented, stone cutters labored to create blocks of nearly equal size and masons chipped away to adjust the stones to fit together. But before stone cutting became an art, builders had to deal with stones as they were, doing the best they could to fit the stones together. The wonder of the stone walls of New England or Kentucky’s horse country is amazing. They are quite solid and strong.

We are a lot like those stones made into solid walls. We aren’t uniform. We are all different. We have different backgrounds and training, different experiences, different hardships or infirmities, different easy streets and free passes, different defeats and triumphs. Yet the Holy Spirit works to bind us together within our generation, adheres us to the generation before us, and prepares to be built upon by those who will come after us.

Paul wants us to take hold of the life that really is life. That life – the life that God implants in us and longs to see it become solid as the foundation for the next layer of the church building – is the future God has been coaxing us toward since our first breath of God-air, since the time when the stone was rolled away from the tomb, indeed since God spoke the first piece of creation into being.

What a treasure that is. It will come to be when, finally, enough blessings have been poured out to firm up all of the foundation stones – you and me and everyone who will receive the gospel through us generation upon generation. When every person has the capacity and each life is filled with the freedom and solid ground to be the blessing that God intended, foundation and future and treasure will indeed be one.

We all know that God desires abundant life for us. That abundant life is based on the foundation of Jesus Christ. As John the Baptist went ahead of him to announce his coming, so Lazarus also went ahead of him in coming out of the tomb. What a treasure was glimpsed in that moment and sealed in the death-conquering, sin-defeating resurrection which Jesus accomplished days later. That treasure was given to the first generation of believers – the disciples and other followers who knew Christ personally. The treasure has been faithfully and gloriously handed along the line of saints year after year, decade after decade, century after century, until we received it. Now it is our turn to hand it on to those who come after us, not just in these seats but in countless holy spaces, some built with bricks and mortar, some under tents and trees or in borrowed rooms. 

Maybe you’ve heard the quip “Jesus expects only one thing from you: everything.” The gospel invites us to give ourselves – give everything – to the life that we know really is life, the blessed kingdom and household of God.

As we have been blessed to be built spiritually on a good foundation of faith, so we become the spiritual foundation for tomorrow’s believers. Our treasure is the realm of God’s rule with Christ on the throne of eternity. Our treasure is the original foundation stone: Jesus Christ himself, the very best foundation for the future.

Thanks be to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Life Without the Blanket

Mark 10:46-52; Hebrews 7:4-28; 1 Timothy 6:11-19

Mark's Gospel consists of more than “the Jesus Story.” Each of the gospels has a sub-text which applies to those who hear or read the gospel and respond to the grace of Christ embodied in it. The sub-text for Mark is that the narrative describes the essence of faithful discipleship for those in his audience who comprehend God’s saving activity in Christ. For Mark the healing of the blind man in Jericho emphasizes this point which comes to its fulfilment in the Passion narrative which is soon to unfold.

Bartimaeus of Jericho is the last person to respond to Jesus before he began his final approach to Jerusalem and the cross. Since the declaration of his messiahship at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus had been making his way slowly south from Galilee toward the center of Jewish religious activity, Jerusalem. As he went, he consistently taught his disciples about his pending death and resurrection. They neither understood him nor recognized the cost of following him. Indeed, the final mistake they made was to fight among themselves about their positions in the pecking order in the messianic kingdom they believed he was about to establish. How could they have been so blind? We read about the mental and spiritual denseness of the disciples and get the image of Jesus as a bobble head doll, because he must have spent a lot of time shaking his head at the disciples’ failure to grasp even the simplest things he tried to teach them.

The disciples had seen and heard Jesus for more than two years now. Bartimaeus couldn’t see, but he had heard about a man who was saying powerful things and doing wonderful deeds of mercy. He also had a sufficient understanding of his religious heritage to know that the promised Messiah would be from the house of David. That would have been on his mind as Passover approached.

Bartimaeus may not have had all the information needed to connect the dots, but he took his chance. I’m sure he has been disappointed on past occasions by quacks and charlatans. So he shouted his affirmation above the din, “Son of David, show me mercy!” And he nails it.

We are so used to dealing with snippets of scripture that we forget that the gospel writers had very specific ideas about Jesus which guided them in the order and way they recounted the stories of Jesus. The story of Bartimaeus is not an isolated story, at least not in the thinking of Mark. The Bartimaeus event, coming just before Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday, culminates a series of events in Mark’s literary arc.

Near the beginning of this last chapter of the traveling Jesus, Jesus blessed children, rebuking his disciples for trying to send them packing to the nursery out of earshot. “Whoever doesn’t welcome God’s kingdom like a child will never enter it.” Children know something that we adults have either forgotten or stomped out of our spiritual thinking.

A piece down the road a man earnestly asks Jesus what he must do to obtain eternal life. One word keys Jesus into the man’s problem. “Obtain.” The man has evidently made “obtaining” an art form. So Jesus tells him to put it all in reverse: divest. “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.” The man went away heart-broken.

In a quiet time later on, the brothers James and John corner Jesus and try to weasel their way onto the short list of those in charge when Jesus is no longer around. (At least they did catch on that he wasn’t going to be around after a while.) They eagerly assert that they can pass the promotion tests – drinking from Jesus’ cup and receiving the same baptism. However they missed the full content of those tests, which they will undergo. But Jesus said it wasn’t up to him who gets the kingdom vice-presidencies.

Mark then threads the narrative around to Bartimaeus, who senses something in all the skit-skat about Jesus and the vibes of the crowd of Passover pilgrims proceeding through Jericho towards Jerusalem. Jesus invites him off the side of the road. “What do you want me to do for you?” “Teacher, I want to see.”

So in the space of one chapter of Mark’s account we meet four men: the rich man, James, John, and Bartimaeus. If all four of them were guests at one of our worship services or activities, who might get the most attention? Which one would you consider the best candidate for church membership? There is a blind man who is going to need a lot of help – physically as well as financially. The Deacons will be wary. There are the two conniving brothers who will beg the Nominating Committee to propose them as session elders so that they can experience the adrenalin rush of power. Then there is the rich man. I can just see the Finance and Stewardship folks salivating at the prospect of balanced budgets and expanded endowments. And the mission folks won’t be far behind seeking gifts for special projects.

Commentator R. T. France notes:

“The last potential recruit we met was an admirable, respectable, and wealthy man, but to the disciples’ consternation he has not been welcomed into Jesus’ entourage. Now we meet a man at quite the other end of the scale of social acceptability, a blind beggar. And it is he, rather than the rich man who will end up following Jesus [on the way] with his sight restored, whereas the rich man has gone away ‘blind’. This man has nothing to lose, nothing to sell, and so his commitment can be immediate and complete. While we hear nothing of his subsequent discipleship, the fact that Mark records his name and his father’s name suggests that he became a familiar character in the disciple group.”(1)

If the key concept about the rich man was the verb “obtain” and his subsequent inability to shed belongings, then the key concept for Bartimaeus is in the participial phrase, “throwing his coat to the side.”

The scripture version that many of us were raised on says that he cast away “his garment.” recent translations have adopted the words “cloak” or “coat.” I think that none of those terms really fit. Here is a beggar who spends his days sitting by the side of the Jerusalem road. Who knows where he spends his nights. My guess is that he didn’t own a coat, not as we think of a coat. Rather than a cloak, I envision him having a blanket, something like a Mexican serape. He’ll throw it over his shoulders and wrap it around himself when it was chilly. Or he could pull it up over head when the sun beat down at midday. It would protect him on those few occasions when the rain would pelt down.

A blanket is best for being settled in one place. It is a hindrance to moving. You can get caught up in the folds as you try to get to your feet or trip over the trailing end if you try to run. For all the comfort and security which a blanket offers, it has its drawbacks.

As the unnamed rich man made a point of obtaining (and had hoped to obtain Jesus as well), the poor blind man named Bartimaeus eagerly threw aside his encumbering covering in order to be received by Jesus.

What encumbers us? What hampers us from getting up and going to Jesus when he call us? What blankets our lives?

The answer to those questions is as unique as each of us. The possible answers are pride, fear, independence, constraining self-control, misunderstanding, security, pig-headedness, bravery, comfort, addiction, narrow-mindedness, narcissism, ignorance, insecurity, peer pressure. I am sure there a lot more. I won’t ask you to call out the name of your blanket. But I will ask you to say its name to yourself.

Naming your blanket is the first step towards unclasping your death-grip on it in preparation to flinging it out of the way in order to get to Jesus. You have to get rid of the blanket if you want to see, to be healed, to live in the grace-filled life that Jesus offers, to follow Jesus on the way.

Bartimaeus demonstrated both perseverance and obedience. He persistently overcame the barriers to his healing and becoming a disciple of Jesus. He was blind and could not get to Jesus; he was rebuked when he called out for mercy. Yet he ignored the reaction of the crowd and came to Jesus. He obeyed immediately by jumping to his feet, leaving behind his only comfort and possession. He knew his desperate condition. Perhaps that is our final barrier. Perhaps we are so enwrapped in the blankets of our living we don't feel our need for him. Do you recognize your spiritual blindness? Are you willing to leave your blanket behind and everything that it represents? Can you respond quickly to Christ’s call?(2)

Throw off your blanket and let Jesus’ words swell in your being: “Go, your faith has healed you.”

Be healed and follow Jesus on the way. There is life without the blanket. May that be your life and may all the thanks be to Christ. Amen.

(1) R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014), 422.
(2) “Mark,” Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 309.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

The Disruption of Peace

Mark 10:2-16; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

We all have our personal definitions of peace. Let me be disruptive of your thinking by suggesting a different definition:

Peace is completeness.

The traditional reading of a line in Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’ is, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48 NRSV). As a rule, perfect means without a flaw, having no imperfections, unable to be improved upon. Our sanctuary Bible translation, The Common English Bible, uses the word “complete” for the word perfect. Yes, grammarians, that may be a slim nuance of meaning but the change of word is insightful. If something is complete, then it is lacking nothing, and nothing additional is needed, Hence, I suggest that peace is completeness. The peace of God lacks nothing. There is nothing additional required. God’s peace is whole in and of itself.

Completeness is the order of creation as God intended it. In the Genesis 1 story of creation, at the completion of each step of creation, God declared it was good. At the close of the sixth and last day of creation “God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good” (Genesis 1:31). In the Genesis 2 story of creation, which explores more deeply the creation of human beings, God determines, “It’s not good that the human is alone. I will make him a helper that is perfect for him” (Genesis 2:18). The initial human being is incomplete without the partner who is “perfect” that is the completion of the other.

The psalmist in Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms, waxes eloquent in line after line praising the perfection, the wholeness, the completeness of the law.

Even the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews uses the notion of perfection and completeness in talking about Jesus:

It was appropriate for God, for whom and through whom everything exists, to use experiences of suffering to make perfect the pioneer of salvation. (Hebrews 2:10)

Jesus is complete. Jesus is perfect. Jesus is whole. Jesus lacks nothing. He has completely, utterly, totally, experienced everything that life encounters. He did not shy away from the things we do, the things that hurt, the things that rip us apart. He allowed himself to be vulnerable to everything. There is no human pain that he did not include in the human suffering that he bore on the cross. Jesus was complete in his humanity as well as his divinity.

When we say to each other, “The peace of the Lord be with you; and also with you,” we are seeking the wholeness, the perfection, the completeness of Christ for each of us.

Yet we are resistant to that peace. Christ’s peace disrupts the fragile framework of our lives. We do work-arounds for the gaps in our lives. We fool ourselves into thinking that things are all right when that isn’t the case. We are used to being incomplete. However miserable we might be, we are unconsciously happy with being the way we are. We settle for our incompleteness and accept it as completeness. We take our vastly imperfect peace and assume that’s all there is.

Christ’s peace is disruptive. That seems inconceivable. Peace is supposed to put everything at rest. Peace is supposed to smooth everything out. But since we have come to accept an imperfect peace as all there is, when Christ’s peace comes near to us and dares to address our imperfection, our incompleteness, we are thrown into a tizzy. Our thoughts are upended, our knowledge of reality is undermined. Our spirits start to churn like a bad case of indigestion. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, I have come instead to bring division” (Luke 12:51). Christ’s peace divides us from all that is false within us

The Pharisees were disrupted as they tried enforce their view of life on Jesus. His teaching, his presence, his demeanor, his perfection, his completeness erupted in them. They couldn’t stand that he was complete, whole, perfect, and they weren’t. The peace that he brought wherever he went negated all the incomplete and false peace that had become so ingrained in the lives of God’s people.

We reject the very thing we desire, the absolute thing we need. Christ’s peace disrupts our selfish, ingrown worlds. It doesn’t matter what the subject is: marriage, divorce, women’s reproductive rights, irresponsible gun violence, spousal abuse, affordable health care, child rearing,  pornography, addiction, arrogant ignorance. Christ’s peace disrupts it all and we won’t take it.

Yet as long as our hearts are unyielding, as long as we repel the peace of Christ, as long as we refuse to let Christ disrupt our imitation peace, we will be incomplete, imperfect, and in no way filled with the peace that Christ seeks to bring us.

That’s why it is so significant that Jesus tells the disciples that “whoever doesn’t welcome God’s kingdom like a child will never enter it.” The youngest children have not yet bought into the false peace that years of living have weighted us down with. They haven’t lived long enough to learn racism, hatred, narrow-mindedness. They aren’t complete by any sense of the word. They are often self-centered, greedy, gullible. Nevertheless they are often unswerving in faith and loyalty. They are open to the fullness, the perfection, the wonder, the completeness of life that Jesus lives, teaches, gives.

This table is an opportunity to become like a child again, to welcome the peace, to receive the completeness that Christ offers. For Christ is complete here. He is totally here for us – his body, his blood, his unrestricted offering of himself for us. Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim Christ’s saving death until he comes again in glory, until he comes in the fullness, the perfection, the completeness that God has intended from before creation began. We come to this table to shed our false peace and taste freshly the peace which is Christ. And every time we taste the bread and sip the cup we have the opportunity to be infused more with Christ’s peace for our lives, the lives of all God’s people, and the life of creation itself. This ongoing disruption will one day rid us all that separates us from Christ so that we may share his complete peace.

The peace of Christ be with you all. Thanks be to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Waging Wisdom

James 3:13-4:3; 7-8a; Jeremiah 11:18-20; Mark 9:30-37

Let’s run a systems check on ourselves this morning. We have sung a hymn and a response, and we have voiced the invitation to worship and the corporate confession, so we know that our voices work. We have listened to a couple of scripture readings and an anthem by the choir, I guess that our ears work. Let’s see if our brains work.

As one of my elementary teachers used to say, “Children, let’s put on our thinking caps.” Think of someone who is the picture of smart. 

Now we’ll test your arm muscles. Raise your hand if the person you imaged had white hair. Thank you. Raise your hand if the person wore glasses. Raise your hand if the person was good-looking. Raise your hand if the person was not of European-American descent. Raise your hand if the person presents an image of confidence and power. Raise your hand if the person was male. There is a possible variation to “smart.” Raise your hand if the person was a “geek” or “nerd” a la Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg.

Now take an eraser and wipe the whiteboard of your mind and let’s try another imagination exercise. Imagine someone who embodies the word “wisdom.” I’ll let you rest your arms. Instead, I’ll play mind reader. I am going to guess that whoever you envisioned as smart disappeared and in that person’s place was a face creased and worn, lined with a road map of wrinkles. The hair was grey, longish, and had that “Einstein-is-my-hairdresser” look. The ethnicity of your “wise” person is not entirely discernable. Gender, too, isn’t exactly clear – there were hints of both feminine and masculine traits. There is, however, a decidedly rumpled and even weary quality to this “wise” one, who also clearly would have qualified for the “senior citizen” rate at the movies. Instead of the telltale marks of “success,” there was a suggestion of satisfaction. A sense of peace and contentment seemed to hang about this human image of “wisdom.” Raise your hand if your image roughly approximates that.

Your own images, of course, may be quite different. But for all of us, being “smart” and being “wise” inhabit two different places in our culturally determined human pantheons. Advertising will tell us that the “smart” one is more appealing. Yet experience may remind us that there is more gravitas with the “wise” one. From our imagining, we have to choose between being rich, successful and well-groomed or being old, wrinkled and having a perpetually bad-hair day. 

Our mental images are predetermined by cultural biases and prejudices which are subtly hard-wired into our brains. Being “smart” is a quality highly valued in our society. To paraphrase Julius Caesar, being “wise” is a quality that doesn’t easily fit into our consumer-oriented, “Veni, Vidi, VISA” (“I came, I saw, I charged”) culture. 

It’s not easy to see what “wisdom” can do for us. So we identify wisdom with images to which we give only marginal status in our culture – the very old and the very young, the mythical “noble” poor, the eternally powerless. At best, we credit “wisdom” with being a virtue we may possibly have the luxury of developing in our retirement years. It is false flattery for our culture to claim that wisdom is achieved in old age, or that we respect and honor our elders for the wisdom they possess. The truth is, we foist the title of “being wise” upon the “Third Age” (60-90) because in the First and Second Ages we are too busy doing the “really important” things of life, too busy trying to be “smart” to be bothered with such an intangible, non-monetary quality as “wisdom.”

Wisdom is not a peripheral quality of life and faith. In ancient Israel, wisdom was a normative, integral part of a compassionate person’s mind and spirit. Jewish wisdom, after all, stressed realism. It asked point-blank, as does James in today’s epistle text, “How can we live so as not to displease God but continue in God’s favor?” The advice of Jewish wisdom was not any mumbo-jumbo chanting of cryptic sayings, or some secret knowledge. It was suggestions on how to run an effective household, how to work with others, how to get along in this world. Jewish wisdom on occasion taught that even wisdom itself need be tempered by wisdom. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes wrote:

“Don’t be too righteous or too wise, or you may be dumbfounded. . . . It’s good that you take hold of one of these without letting go of the other because the one who fears God will go forth with both.” (Ecclesiastes 7:16, 18)

This vision of wisdom shaped Jesus’ advice to his disciples that they should be “wise as snakes and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Wisdom is not the sage, sanctimonious sayings of old folk. It is the informed, inspired, yet humble movement of God’s Spirit and insight within the human heart and mind.

When James urges Christians to act wisely in their community of faith, he is differentiating between those who know more and those who know better. Owls are our classic symbols of wisdom. Perhaps it is their quiet ways, their wide-eyed, taking-it-all-in stare or the fact that they can swivel their necks 180 degrees and so keep as sharp a lookout behind them as they can in front of them, that gives them this reputation for “wisdom.”

Crows and ravens, on the other hand, are known to be very smart birds. Like parrots, they can be taught to talk and can figure out fairly complex logistical problems. However, crows and ravens are also compulsive collectors. They will fill their nests with odd bits of shiny metal, gleaming buttons, bright string – anything glitzy and gaudy that catches their eye is dragged home.

In today’s text, James calls Christians to embody wisdom, that is, to be the owls of this world – a world where there is the paradox of more and more information, and less and less wisdom. Too many of us have become crows – smart to the ways of the world, and stupidly suckered in to any bright new idea, any slickly appealing gimmick.

Christian owls, James reminds us, are called not to wage war, but to wage wisdom on this world. Waging wisdom takes an entirely different type of armor than the secular world is used to dealing with. James calls his Christian brothers and sisters to outfit themselves with wisdom from above which is “pure, and then peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine” (v.17). The outcome will be that “those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts” (v. 18).

Jesus contrasts “smart” and “wise” when he catches the disciples up in their inner thoughts about who will take Jesus’ place after his death – little did they grasp what rising on third day really meant. “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

Wisdom – greatness – is determined by servanthood. A true leader places his or her self and needs last, as Jesus exemplified in his life and in his death. Being a “servant” did not mean occupying a servile position; rather it meant having an attitude of life that freely attended to others’ needs without expecting or demanding anything in return. 

Jesus described leadership from a new perspective. Instead of using people, we are to serve them. Jesus’ mission was to serve others and to give his life away. A real leader has a servant’s heart. Servant leaders appreciate the worth of other people and realize that they are not to be above any job. Jesus invites each of us into this wisdom. Jesus would say to us, “If you see something that needs to be done, don’t wait to be asked. Take the initiative and do it like a faithful servant. Don’t approach life expecting high positions, honors, and special privileges. Look instead for ways to help others.”

The leadership – servanthood – that Jesus calls us to depends on the wisdom from above that James cites. This wisdom is pure. At the same time as we gain pure hearts, we peel away the false wisdom and the “‘smartness” of the world. Wisdom is peaceful and grows from the inside of the person into the world around them. This peace is to be not just preferred but spread. Gentleness tempers justice with mercy. Wisdom knows that obedience to God is an ongoing task that requires personal change as the will of God becomes more and more revealed through prayer and study. And God’s wisdom is full of God’s gracious forgiveness. And his love leads to fair and genuine good actions of helping and serving others. 

So imagine yourself as a beneficiary of God’s marvelous grace and you, too, can wage wisdom rather than strife, wage wisdom rather than smartness, wage wisdom for salvation and God’s glory. May we commit our way to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Learn to Live as a Loser

Mark 8:27-38; Isaiah 50:4-91; James 3:1-10

One of the daily comic strips in the Chillicothe Gazette is “The Born Loser.” Brutus Thornapple has been a hapless victim of circumstances for 50 years now. He can never get anything right, nothing ever goes his way, he has a hectoring wife and a harrowing mother-in-law. He is the epitome of “loser.” 

I remember that “loser” was a taunt that was hurled frequently on the elementary playground. Today we would consider that activity a mild form of bullying, for it devalues the ones who are thus labeled.

At the close of last week’s episode of the television program, “The Biggest Loser,” the woman weighed in after participating in the program for a year. The final weigh-in showed that she had shed almost half of her starting weight. She had lost 151 pounds and was down to svelte 158 pounds. She looked wonderful. Her life attitude had totally changed. Through the support of the exercise and nutrition counselors and her faithful husband she was a new woman. She was the biggest loser but in reality she was the biggest gainer.

Speaking of gains, that other religion of the land – OSU Football – now has two buckeye leaves on the win chart towards what practitioners of that faith hope will be a second coming of the glories of last season’s national championship. 

Let me refresh your memories of the gospel account of last season. The intended starting quarterback, the Big Ten conference player of the year for two years, was injured before the season began. His backup stepped in and, after a shaky start, led the team to an 11-1 record, setting 17 school and two Big Ten records, before breaking his ankle in the last regular game of the season. At that point, the third quarterback came off the bench to lead the team to victories in the conference championship and the two national playoff games that gave Ohio State the national championship. It wasn’t the expected hero but two benchwarmers who made the difference.(1)

Sitting on the bench is the pits. Every team has them in case of emergency, so to speak. They are the pinch-hitter in baseball or the sixth man in basketball. Pro football teams play 11 positions for offense or defense and the carry a 53-man roster. Benchwarmers have enough talent to get them to the bench, but they don't start because someone else has more talent. They could sit on the sidelines and sulk about how unfair life is or how the coach doesn’t like them. Or they could be the ones greeting the teammates as they come off the field. They could be the ones who sit next to the teammate who fumbled the ball and offer words of encouragement. They could be the ones who set aside their dreams, their hopes, their lives for their friends and for the sake of that community called the team.

The image is most vivid in the realm of sports. But there are second- and third-stringers in all walks of life. There are spouses who give up good jobs to follow their mate as he or she seeks or makes a significant career advancement. There are those who quietly serve behind the scenes and out of the limelight doing what they know they are called to do and getting little or no glory for it. 

There was a letter to the editor in the Columbus Dispatch recently from a doctor who had served in Perry County under the National Health Scholarship Program of three years of service in a rural clinic in exchange for his medical education. The government clinic worked 8 to 5 on weekdays only. Next door to the clinic was small town doctor who often saw patients in the evenings, on weekends, and on holidays. He also made frequent house calls. The Genesis Healthcare System, to whom he had sold his building and his practice a he looked towards retirement, fired him with no explanation. The letter writer said that he didn’t know or care about the financial and political reasons behind his firing. But, he said, “I am willing to bet he has worked harder, longer and for less money to provide health care for the people of Appalachia than any executive of Genesis Healthcare System of Zanesville.”(2) Another loser who is really a gainer.

Prophets talk about speaking “truth to power.” Jesus spoke divine truth in the midst of human power. He revealed his messiahship to his disciples on foreign territory. Caesarea Philippi, at one of three sources of the Jordan River, was a vacation spa built by Philip the Tetrarch, son of Herod the Great, and dedicated to Tiberius Caesar and himself, hence the name: Caesarea Philippi.  It was situated on a beautiful terrace about 1,150 feet above sea level on the southwest slope of Mount Hermon overlooking the Jordan valley. The Sea of Galilee, on the other hand, lay nearly 700 feet below sea level. The summer’s oppressive heat drove any who could afford it to retreats like this royal spa. It must have been of considerable significance to Mark and to his audience that this should be the place where Jesus revealed his full identity to the disciples. The fundamental apostolic creed proclaimed, “Jesus is Lord,” not Caesar or his puppet king, Philip.



No matter how little we think we know about scripture, all of us have had Christ’s messiahship drilled into us. We have heard this reading from Mark, along with its parallels in Matthew and Luke, so many times that it has lost its shock value. Peter says, “You are the Christ,” and our thought is, “Yeah, everybody knows that!” But at the moment that Peter uttered those words nobody knew it. Not the disciples, not the religious elite, not the political incumbents, not the man or woman in the street. Peter’s words shattered the existing order of things. In an earsplitting phrase the world was forever changed.

Changed, not because the unimaginable had been put into words. Changed, not because a long cherished dream was about to become reality. Changed because the long-held dream was completely reinterpreted, cast in a new light, re-imaged. The one in the know threw out the generations-old dream of a military/political conqueror and replaced it with a loser. The expected champion would not do physical or verbal battle with the powers that be. He would hold his face high and submit to every ploy and trick in the book and be defeated, dying in the most hideous fashion. Then, in the midst of tyrannical gloating, he would show God’s true purpose and exercise the power for which no earthly power was a match. 

It is always disconcerting to hear Jesus tell the disciples not to tell anyone about him. It is really an extension of other times when he asked individuals not speak about him. And they always do. Peter’s response to Jesus’ explanation of his messiahship suggests the reason Jesus may have tried to keep it quiet. Peter’s response shows that he didn’t understand. He had the right title but the wrong definition. If everyone went off talking up Jesus as Messiah but with the wrong understanding, the entire mission and ministry could be compromised. The whole Palestinian world of Jesus’ day would be trying to force a square peg Jesus into a round hole revolution. The end result would be devastating. There will be no glory and reward in that misguided approach.

Some scripture passages are filled with information. Some are filled with rules and guidelines. This one has neither. It has a single demand. It requires a personal commitment. Who is Jesus for you? Only you and you alone can answer that for yourself. And we have to do so knowing that we may have the title right but may not fully understand the meaning. What does it mean for us if we call Jesus Savior? Son of God? Messiah?

Peter was human. We are human. Jesus urges Peter, urges us to gain another perspective. That is a lifetime of work. We are invited to find in our relationship with Jesus the promise and the hope that somehow the divine perspective on who we are and what we are about will break through our wall of humanity and grow within us. Then we will find a way of life that is different from the way of the world, a way that fill truly and eternally fulfill all that God intends. The world calls it “losing.” God calls it salvation. If that is the case, each of us is called to learn to live as a loser, for those who lose their lives because of Jesus and because of the good news will save them.

Praise the Lord.

(1) Thom Shuman, “benchwarmers and toothpaste,” midrash@joinhands.com, Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 11:17 AM
(2) Ronald Bloomfield, “Physician gave all to a poor community,” Columbus Dispatch, Friday, September 11, 2015, B, 14.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Who Is an Immigrant?

James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:34-37; Isaiah 35:4-7a

Immigrant: one who comes to a country to take up residence.

Alien: a person of another family, race, nation; a foreigner; someone or something differing in nature or character, typically to the point of incompatibility.

Sojourner: one who stays temporarily.

Foreigner: a person belonging to or owing allegiance to another country.

Multiple translations of the Old Testament Hebrew intermix these terms, which are used upwards of 250 times, representing three word roots. The New Testament Greek’s uses come in at under three dozen.

In the Old Testament the phrase, “the widow, the orphan and the stranger/sojourner/alien” form a recurring refrain in legal code texts as well as the prophetic writings. 

While “stranger” is the preferred word in the King James version many of us were raised on, our sanctuary Contemporary English Bible likes the word “immigrant.”

Since this constellation of related words – with nuanced differences – is prevalent in scripture, there must be a message for us within them.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes near the conclusion of the great listing of praiseworthy forebears in the faith:

“All these people died in faith without receiving the promises, but they saw the promises from a distance and welcomed them. They confessed that they were strangers and immigrants on earth.” (Hebrews 11:13)

The psalmist many centuries earlier wrote:

“Hear my prayer, Lord!
Listen closely to my cry for help!
Please don’t ignore my tears!
I’m just a foreigner—an immigrant with you.
Just like all my ancestors were.” (Psalm 39:12)

The word to us is that we are all aliens, foreigners, strangers, immigrants.

In the sociology of the Appalachian culture in the midst of which we dwell, a person isn’t a native until they have lived here well into the third or fourth generation. We aren’t native unless our great-grandparents lived here. We are still immigrants, even after a quarter century.

So think about it. We are immigrants. And we have been a number of times. 

• Many of us were immigrants leaving another place and society to come to Waverly.
• For some of you it was a hard immigration from a life of working to a life of retirement (and some of you failed, didn’t you?)
• We were immigrants leaving home and going to college, going into the military, marrying into a new family, getting our first job, and the next one, or changing careers.
• And, for most of us, this thing called aging is surely alien territory and there be dragons.

Being immigrants is not something new. Forget the fact that most all of our ancestors in one generation or another crossed an ocean to live in a land filled with promises and perils. The political revolution that created this nation was an immigration from the tyranny of an absent and exploitive monarchy to an experiment in broad-based community government, a democracy. Most of the early settlers lived off the land, hunting, fishing, doing subsistence farming. 

Later generations were immigrants in a new form of life called the Industrial Revolution. That led to immigration from far-flung rural cabins to the urban tenements of cities. The expansion of mass production was aided by the influx of immigrants mostly from Europe. Then the Great Depression set in and nearly a third of the population became immigrants in a life of hardship. 

Following the end of World War II our parents immigrated from being GI Joes and Rosie Riveters to living the seemingly never ending good life. Some of us immigrated from the inner city to the strange world of the suburbs. We became immigrants in the information age as television came of age, the Internet was created, and now the digital age in which our children and grandchildren are full-fledged natives. We can only imagine what they will have to immigrate to over the course of their lives.

In the great parable of the judgment of the nations in Matthew 25, when those to the king’s left, who are being eternally banished, ask, “When did we see you ... a stranger ?” their question is from a position of rootedness rather than the rootless life of immigrants. They had done everything they could to solidify and plant themselves in a life to which they dearly wanted to be accustomed. They missed the whole point of their relationship with God.

Calvin Butts, pastor of New York City’s Abyssinian Baptist Church had a father who was a butcher and a mother who was a simple servant. He says, “I never thought the dream was about trying to become more successful than my parents were materially. I never had an idea that it was about one generation doing better than the next.” To him the essence of the American Dream was in the “prophetic and poetic” words of the Declaration of Independence on the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”(1) Once again we are brought back to those profound words of the Westminster divines: “The chief end of human beings is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” 

We are immigrants in a world, a culture, a lifestyle that goes on around us. Yet the words of the Ephesian letter tell us a deeper truth than the dis-ease of daily living: 

“You are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household.” (Ephesians 2:19)

Because we are immigrants in a culture and society that at best only mouths the word “God,” and at worst, denounces God, and because our citizenship is in a world very different from the physical world our bodies inhabit, we are in this together. That creates unlikely alliances. We are an mixture of bodies – toned, tattooed, or tubby. We are old, young, rich, poor, helpless and helpful, stutterers and orators, dreamers and pragmatists. Yet our citizenship is the same. In baptism we have been made all the same – adopted children of the King of kings. 

The words that James offers his faith community apply to every faith community. Regardless of outward appearances, despite what may appear to be blessing or curse of the economic and social life, believers – you and me and everyone washed in Christ’s name – are equal. There is to be no favoritism. Unlike the characters in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some of us are not more equal than others. We are all citizens of God’s eternal realm, even in the here and now.

If we are called to treat each other as full sisters and brothers in the Lord, that behavior should be the way we behave no matter where we are or who we are with. Jesus on numerous occasions reached out to people who, for a variety of reasons, were not welcomed and included in the faith community created by God through the formation of the Israelite nation or its seemingly constant testing, discipline, exile, and reconstruction. The dream of Isaiah does not change: 

“Say to those who are panicking:
‘Be strong! Don’t fear! . . .
God will come to save you.’
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened;
and the ears of the deaf will be cleared.
Then the lame will leap like the deer,
And the tongue of the speechless will sing.” (Isaiah 35:4-6)

The realm of God’s rule is always coming near. God’s reign is always happening. But it is always happening in the midst of what seems like a universal and impossibly fierce effort to thwart it. That is why we are aliens, strangers, foreigners, immigrants. We live in the constantly coming, almost-but-not-yet reality of what God has called creation to be and do. 

Who is an immigrant? You and you and you and you – each of us. And that is all right. We are each a little colony of heaven. God the Father will protect us. God the Son will guide us. God the Spirit will bless our immigrant life.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) Cited in America’s Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), 2-3.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.