We Are Manumitted

We Are Manumitted
Galatians 3:23-29;
1 Kings 19:1-18; Luke 8:26-39

January 1st of this year marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln. The 1863 executive order was issued to all segments of the Executive branch (including the Army and Navy) and proclaimed that all those enslaved in the ten states in rebellion – the Confederate States – were to be forever free. The order applied to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S.

The stroke of a pen had a mighty effect on history, on the lives of millions of people alive at the time, and future generations through our own and beyond.

A few slaves had been freed prior to that near-universal decree. Some had bought their freedom. Some were freed from slavery through the last testaments of their owners. The act of freeing a slave is called manumission. The owner would write – manually, by hand, in those day – a legal document declaring that the named bearer was freed. Manumission has historical roots in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Judaism legislated manumission. In Exodus 21, just after the first reading of the tablets of the Law, the “Holiness Code” says,

“When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.” (Exodus 21:2-3)

Manumission of a Canaanite slave was seen as a religious conversion, and involved an immersion in a ritual bath. The Talmud made many rulings which made manumission easier. The price to buy freedom was reduced from the value of a hired servant over the entire period of service to the original price for which the servant was purchased, pro-rated for the amount of service already worked. If the servant had become weak or sickly, and worth less in the market, the price of freedom was to be reduced further. Increase in strength or skills by a servant was not an adequate reason for raising the manumission fee.

Paul says that before Christ, we were slaves. We were “imprisoned and guarded under the law.” That cuts two ways. The religious laws of the Hebrew scriptures did restrain and protect the people from hurting themselves and others. But the religious law also imprisoned people, preventing them from thinking and assessing their lives on their own.

Paul uses the image of a pedagogue to describe the law’s application. A pedagogue is a school teacher or a disciplinarian. In Paul’s time it was a slave who was like a nanny, having supervision of the children. Part of the pedagogue’s job was to see that the children got safely to and from their tutors. The protective custody of the pedagogue was temporary, until the children came of age and no longer needed to be supervised.

In terms of the history of faith, Paul says that we were guarded under the law which served as our nanny “until faith was revealed.” For Paul, that revealed faith was Jesus Christ.

Paul probably understood very well what it meant to be a slave, to be owned, to be oppressed, to be under the thumb of someone or something superior. Paul came from Tarsus. By whatever cause, he was a Roman citizen. But he was also a Jew who lived in a Gentile setting. The Tarsus Paul lived in had three millennia of Greek history. It was a Hellenistic city appropriated by the Romans to be the capital of the province of Cilicia. It was a prosperous seaport and was known for industries such linen weaving and sail and tent-making. It also achieved fame as a center of learning. It was as Paul observed, “no mean city” (Acts 21:39). However, the size of the Jewish population is unknown and was likely to have been only a small minority.(1)

Minority groups find many means to survive. Jews adopted their religious traditions as their way of confirming their identity. We do not know whether Paul became an ardent Pharisee in Tarsus or later in Jerusalem. In either case, however, he would have been considered an outsider, first in Tarsus as an ardent Jew meticulous about keeping the law of Moses, and then as a Hellenist in Jerusalem with an accent and an attitude. Whenever he met a Christian community in his missionary travels, he found at a safe haven. This reality shines through this high point in his letter to the Greek-speaking Christians of Galatia.

The passage contains Paul's most decisive statement that faith in Jesus Christ has removed all barriers to a relationship with God and with one another for all who believe. We are manumitted. We are set free. As he writes later in the Galatian letter, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

We are not set free on a whim. We are set free for a purpose. We are manumitted to be free from the oppression of ourselves. The gospel does not begin with us. Nor does it end with us. Unfortunately, we are happiest in churches that are just like us, so that no one disagrees with us. And if no one disagrees with us, then we don’t have to think about our faith. We just put our dollar in the plate and go merrily on our way, convinced that all is right with the world and with God.

We shun diversity and difference and disagreement. We forget that the Spirit thrives in diversity. Remember the Day of Pentecost’s United Nations list in the second chapter of Acts? People from all over the then known world were present when the Spirit struck. And the Gospel was understood not in a common language but in all the languages that were present. The most profound differences between people known to Paul, like the differences between people known to us, are nothing compared to the power of Christ to reconcile all things. God in Christ was reconciling the world to God’s self. Christ has made one body out of an infinitely varied tapestry of believers.(2)

What we need to be set free from is our stubborn tendency toward self-centeredness. Paul had written several sentences before today’s reading: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (2;19b-20a).  We nod in agreement with Paul’s words, and then lustily sing “We shall overcome someday,” with the emphasis on “we.”

Yet the kingdom has already come in Christ. It was not our doing. It was not according to our timetable or our design. Eugene Peterson puts Paul’s similar words to the Ephesians this way: “We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! . . . God does both the making and the saving” (Ephesians 2:8-9, The Message).

The core of the gospel for Paul is this: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” We are set free from our Jewishness or our Greekness, our slaveness or our freeness, our maleness or our femaleness. Carol Holtz-Martin extends the analogy this way:

“In the midst of complex immigration controversies, ‘There is neither native born nor illegal immigrant.’ In a society dramatically divided by income, ‘There is neither monied nor working class nor poor.’ In a society polarized by race, ‘There are neither people of color nor people of no color.’ In the season of elections, ‘There is neither Republican nor Democrat nor Independent...’ And to repeat Paul’s own words: ‘There is neither male nor female.’ For you all are one in Christ!”(3)

We all are one Christ because Christ has set us free from all the divisions and categories you and I and everyone else love to imprison ourselves in. We are manumitted, set free to be together as one, to be heirs of the promise, to be Christ’s own. We didn’t do it. We didn’t earn it. We are graced with it. Take your freedom seriously and allow Christ to dwell in you, making you one with him and with all whom he shares his grace.

(1) John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday June 23 2013 which is the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 7. Year C,” midrash@joinhands.com, Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 10:34 PM.
(2) Carol E. Holtz-Martin, “Galatians 2:23-29–Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 163.
(3) Ibid., p. 165.

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission.

Mending, Bending, Rending Walls

Mending, Bending, Rending Walls
Luke 7:36-50; 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21; Galatians 2:15-21

One of Robert Frost’s more famous poems begins this way:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.(1)

Frost goes on to talk about working with his neighbor to mend the fence:
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

The two are not dealing with livestock. The neighbor has pine and Frost has apples, which “will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines.” He wonders what the phrase means: “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Although Paul doesn’t use the word wall in his writing to the Galatian believers, that is certainly what he is speaking about. Something that separates, divides off, keeps apart. Certain people were attempting to build a spiritual, theological, ethical wall between the converts to the Way of Christ which Paul had preached and the grace of Christ. These wall builders were called Judaizers because they wanted to reimpose the Mosaic purity code on the Christians who were former Jews and to make the Gentile converts to Christ follow its precepts. That purity code included circumcision, the dietary restrictions, and the various laws regulating personal bodily contamination that prevented participation in sacrifices and worship.

In Paul's estimation, his fellow Jews were wrong in assuming that they put themselves in good standing with God – justified, to use Paul’s term – by keeping the laws designed to create ritual purity worthy of admission to God’s covenant. Gentiles could not easily accept the rigorous purification practices of diet and circumcision as practical expressions of their relationship with God. The Judaizers were using the ritual law as a wall between the free grace of Christ and being able to live in that grace. Paul worried that if his Galatian friends were forced to submit to the Jewish Law, they would desert the Christian community altogether. In situations of conflict and crisis it does not take much to create doubt and disaffection in the minds and hearts of believers who are still trying to learn the vast riches of their relationship with Christ.

Like the up-heaving winter frost and rabbit-chasing hunters of Frost’s poem, Christ breaks down the wall which the Judaizers keep trying to build. With the sharp scalpel of rhetoric, Paul cuts out the distinctions between Jews and Christians.

“We have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.  But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not.”

The he continues,

“But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor.”

Christ does tear down the wall. Paul said so to the Ephesian believers:

“So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth . . . were . . . without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” (Ephesians 2:11-15; emphases added)

We can see Christ breaking down walls and making peace as he dines with a Pharisee. While he is there a local woman, described as a sinner – probably a euphemism for ‘prostitute’ – crashed the party, bathed Jesus’ feet, and anointed them with an ointment from an alabaster jar.

It is important for Luke to indicate that Jesus not only ate with the “tax collectors and sinners,” but also with the Pharisees! It may be that by the time of Luke, the believers had begun to look at the Pharisees as the “outcasts,” as the Pharisees had done to the “tax collectors and sinners” during Jesus’ day. Whether it is a sin of self-righteousness or of sinful living, Jesus welcomes both kinds of sinners. He accepts the Pharisee’s invitation to a meal as well as the sinful woman’s (scandalous) acts of love.

People generally washed and anointed their own feet. Foot washing was a routine matter of cleanliness, and the use of oil or ointment on one’s feet was soothing for those shod in sandals. When guests arrived at someone’s home, especially after a journey, the host usually provided a basin and water for the guests to wash their own feet before sharing the meal. A slave was virtually the only one who could be expected to wash and anoint the feet of another person. Because of these connotations, those who voluntarily washed someone else’s feet showed that they were devoted enough to act as that person’s slave.(2)

The Pharisee seeks to rebuild the wall between the woman and Jesus as well as between him and Jesus. The Pharisee in a stage whisper says, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him–that she is a sinner.” The Pharisee made two assumptions: (1) If Jesus were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman she is who is touching him, namely a sinner and he wouldn’t allow such a woman to touch him; and (2) since Jesus did not stop the woman, he must not be a prophet.

That’s when Jesus offers what seems to be a simple riddle. Addressing the Pharisee by name, Simon, he says, “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” The word “canceled” that Jesus uses means more than a simple release from an obligation. Jesus’ word is based on the word that means grace, kindness, mercy. A release from the debt obligation simply puts the wall back together after it had fallen down. The notion of grace, kindness, mercy removes the wall, completely takes away the distinction of on one side having a need and on the other side, being able to supply the need.

Brian Stoffregen says that many folks in our society who are in financial bondage because of credit card debt or underwater mortgages would understand Jesus’ riddle. He goes on to say,

“Part of my growth in faith is to become more aware of the depth of my sinfulness. In younger days, sin was bad things one did. Forgiveness implied not being punished as I deserved for doing those bad things. Since the bad things I might do weren’t all that bad nor that often, I didn’t think I needed much forgiving—not like those other sinners in the world. However, I’ve come to realize that my sinfulness is much deeper than my bad deeds—it involves inner attitudes, desires, motivations, etc., and thus, I also am in need of forgiveness and grace that reaches those depths.”(3)

We are not fifty denarii debtors. We need a great deal more forgiven through grace, kindness, and mercy.

Forgiveness is the breaking down of the wall which separates us from our neighbors, whether they are sinners of the streets or sinners of snobbery. Christ’s forgiveness breaks down the wall that separates us from God and from the fulfillment of all that God has called us to be in our unique creation.

Christ helps us to tear down the walls that are around us. Yet we too often fall into the practice of rebuilding what we have torn down. We tear it down to get to the other side. Then once there we build it back up again. Do we do that to keep us from getting out? To feel safe? To not let anyone else in?

Life is a constant effort of reinventing ourselves through the grace of Christ. He enables us to break down outdated notions and to create new ones, many of which will have to be broken down at some future point in time. But it is his grace that makes it possible to mend, to bend, and to rend the walls that deny God, that deny the image of God in others, and deny the image of God in ourselves.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. And that something is Christ.

Thanks be to God.


(1) Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” North of Boston (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1983), p. 1. (first published, 1914)
(2) Craig R. Koester,  Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2003), pp. 112f.
(3) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday – Luke 8:36-8:3,” Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 9:47 PM

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission..

Otherwise Dead

Otherwise Dead
Luke 7:11-17;
1 Kings 17:8-24; Galatians 1:11-24


Preaching is a balancing act. We preachers are constantly dealing with smidgens of scripture cast against the whole backdrop of God’s great activity vis a vis human creation. It is like squinting with one eye to see close up while squinting with the other eye to see far away. All at the same time.

Take today’s reading from Luke. The simple passage is that Jesus goes into the town of Nain and happens on a funeral procession. The deceased man was the only son of a widowed woman. Jesus approaches the bier and tells the woman not to weep. He touches the bier and addresses the corpse, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And he sat up and began talking. The crowd was seized with fear and awe and gave glory to God.

If we take step back, this story follows immediately on the heels of the story we read last week of the healing (at a distance) of the centurion’s slave. The centurion, although a Gentile, understood the nature of God’s authority.

The two adjacent stories have a number of contrasts:
• male vs. female
• centurion vs. widow
• wealthy vs. (probably) poor
• position of status vs. position of little or no status
• Gentile vs. Jew
• honored slave vs. only son
• deathly sick vs. dead
• requested the healing vs. Jesus intercedes uninvited
• faith is praised vs. no faith mentioned
• healed from a distance vs. speaking directly to the corpse(1)

Together these two stories illustrate one of Luke’s primary gospel themes: the all-inclusive nature of Jesus’ ministry. Where does all this lead? The episode that immediately following the raising of the dead man is the one where the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus and ask if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another. Part of Jesus’ answer to them is that “the dead are raised” (Luke 7:18-23) — something he had just done. These two miracles begin a section of revealing Jesus as a great prophet (Luke 7:16) and even more than a prophet — the Messiah of God (Luke 9:20).

John Shearman says that the emphasis in the story here was on Jesus' compassion for the widow, not on his power to raise the dead. It exhibited Jesus' gracious concern for the most vulnerable and helpless. When Jesus touched the bier, the Jewish holiness code said he was contaminated. Jesus’ act, however, said that the higher law of mercy trumps liturgical purity. Then Jesus gave the son back to the mother, just as Elijah gave the Zarephath widow’s son back to her.

Prof. George Caird asserted that there is no doubt that the early church had a strong conviction that Jesus did return to life those whom others had declared dead.(3) In this pair of events Luke forcefully asserted that Jesus is the source of life. That is the church’s task today — to make the same assertion to the world.

Who are the dead today? Brian Stoffregen says that the church needs to continually challenge those who claim to be Christ’s disciples: “If you aren’t experiencing God’s presence in your life and telling others about Jesus, why not?”(4)  The truth is that God has been doing remarkable, miraculous things in us, with us, and even through us — probably every day, at least weekly, most certainly once in while. What are those stories? If we don’t recognize them, then maybe we are the dead. If we do recognize them and don’t tell them, how are we bringing any other of God’s people back to life?

To bring God’s human creatures back to life – out of non-relationship with God to relationship with God – or to use centuries-old theological language, from sin to salvation – to bring God’s human creatures back to life is the mission which God has entrusted the Church. It is the mission which God allowed Jesus to live out in full human flesh.

The currently popular term for doing God’s work through the community of Christ is “missional.” It has gone viral. Congregations have seized upon the word and claim that anything they do in the spirit of missional is part of the work and ministry of Christ. Alan Roxburgh says that “The word ‘missional’ seems to have traveled the remarkable path of going from obscurity to banality in only one decade.”(5)

George Bullard explains it this way:

“If everything the Church does that hints of the Missio Dei [mission of God] is labeled missional, and if every congregation has to figure out how to be called missional, the word and concept loses its meaning. It moves from high expectation to low expectation. It moves from excellence in serving the Missio Dei to mediocre service. It moves from the exceptional to the ordinary. It moves from cutting-edge ministry to commonplace ministry. It moves from fresh, new, and original to banal.”(6)

As Roxburgh suggests, it moves from obscurity to banality. Or more bluntly, it moves from life to death.

George Bullard goes on to say that in order for there to be high expectations for missional service to happen, it has to happen where there is a congregational-wide movement that characterizes everything that is done. That is, it is second nature for the congregation to live in the spirit expressed in the third great parable of Matthew 25: “Just as you did it to the one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Bullard gives a simple definition: “A missional congregation is captivated by the [mission of God], and seeks to make the world more loving and just through spiritually transforming the lives of neighbors.”(7)

Neighbors are defined here in a full global and local context. It is not a geographical neighbor but a theological neighbor. It is not neighbors to be attracted, but neighbors with whom we can represent the incarnational presence of the Triune God.

Missional congregations, while deeply caring for the needs of one another in their own congregation, are externally focused and seek to mobilize their congregations to be received, accepted, caught, embraced, and trusted by their neighbors. Missional congregations do not send missionaries and volunteers into their immediate or world context. Rather they invite people to be received by the neighbors for whom God has given them great passion. To be missional is
• to be received by the people to whom you feel sent
• to be genuine
• to be internal agents within their culture
• to present the gospel in contextually relevant ways
• to share the gospel with people who are becoming our friends.

Jesus was willing to touch the bier of the dead man in order to make or remake a friend for God. Elijah was willing to stake everything on the ongoing generosity of God which had not failed the widow or her son or him. Paul put himself in the presence of the people to whom he was sent. He did not come of his own accord. He did not present a teaching that he had commandeered, he received the teaching directly from Christ.

God calls us to join Christ in raising the dead and in befriending those whom others decree as dead. The church is not funeral home. The church is a birthing room and each of us is called to be a midwife for Christ. Yet most of the births are not going to happen within these sterile walls. They are going to happen in classrooms and barrooms, in back rooms and back alleys, over coffee and cola, bottled water and organic yogurt.

Paul reminded the Roman believers of the quote from the prophet Joel, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But then he goes on to ask, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written [in Isaiah 52:7], “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:13-15).

If we are not those feet, if we are not the bringers of good news, if we are not the birthers of new life, then we are more dead than those whom Christ calls us to raise for him. Are we not the people who realize that wherever we are is a place of holy mystery and that God is at work? Are we not the ones who move from quietly worshipful to noisily grateful, telling one and all, “God is here, looking to the needs of his people!” That’s how the news of Jesus spread all through the country. That’s how we got it. That’s how we hand it on.

Thanks be to God.


(1) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Wed, May 29, 2013 at 1:29 AM
(2) John Shearman, midrash@joinhands.com, Opening Comments for June 6, 2010 which is the Second Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 5. Year C., Sun, May 30, 2010 at 7:03 PM.
(3) George B. Caird, St. Luke. Pelican New Testament Commentaries, (London: Pelican Press, 1963), 110.
(4) Brian Stoffregen, op. cit.
(5) Quoted in Craig Van Gelder and Dwight J. Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), p. 1.
(6) George Bullard, “Missional Banality Revisited
Is Being Missional Too Commonplace?” George Bullard’s Journey, May 16, 2013, http://bullardjournal.blogs.com/bullardjournal/2013/05/missional-banality-revisited.html.
(7) Ibid.

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission.

Introverted Faith

Introverted Faith
1 Kings 18:20-21, 30-39;
Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10

More years ago than I can count there was a commercial on television (it may have been in black and white) that featured a boy and his dog. The boy was stroking the dog and singing, “My dog’s better than your dog, my dog’s better than yours; my dog’s better than your dog, he eats Ken-L-Ration. My dog’s better than yours.”

We live in a competitive world and it has been that way for some time. It has to do with the rugged individualism which has been force-fed in our pablum since the days when our ancestors had to survive the wilderness of this continent or the rigors of voyages in steerage or worse and the hardship of immigrant communities. The competitive spirit comes with birth.
Who of us hasn’t overheard a conversation, “My daughter walked at 12 months.” “Well, mine did it at 11 months.” Or “My son got an 800 on his math SAT.” “That’s nice. Mine got perfect scores on the ACT. We won’t go into athletics where the competition is even more intense.

Competition even happens in religion. That’s part of the story read earlier about the contest between the prophets of Baal (450 of them, backed by Jezebel and Ahab), and Elijah, God’s chosen representative against the chief fertility god of the indigenous community. It’s a great story. It has always stirred me. We cheer for Elijah. We love the way Elijah mocks the Baal prophets as they vainly try to get Baal to roast the sacrifice. They chant and sing and gyrate and flagellate themselves in their futile attempt to get their god to ignite the sacrifice.

When they give up and it is Elijah’s turn, he builds an altar with twelve symbolic stones. Then he orders the sacrifice to be flooded with water, not once but three times. If you have ever tried to light a campfire after a downpour, you know how well wet wood burns, let alone gets lit.

Elijah invokes God, who sends such a fire that the drowned offering is consumed – as well as the stones of the altar, the trench full of water and the drought earth dust.

Can’t you hear the chorus in the background singing: “My God’s better than your god, My God’s better than yours....”

The competition doesn’t end there. The story concludes with Elijah ordering that the prophets of Baal be slaughtered. That made Jezebel fiercely angry. She was a princess of Sidon, one of the Phoenician cities that worshiped Baal. She issued a vendetta on Elijah and he fled to the wilderness thinking that he was the only one who worshiped God. But that’s an Elijah story for another time.

At first blush we want to cheer Elijah on with the defeat of the prophets of Baal and their subsequent demise. Good defeats evil. The followers of false idols get what they deserve. The competitive spirit is that great. The history of our faith is replete with the crusade mentality of “We are better than you; our God is better than your idol.” Much of the history of the occupation of Canaan by the Israelites, much of the history of David and his descendants, much of the history of the Israelites in subjugation to neighboring political powers, is as much religious braggadocio as it is political machinations.
When Jesus came along, those in positions of religious power perceived Jesus as a threat because they believed that he put himself in the place of God, a stance they understood as a slap against their understanding of God. The Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, terrorized the followers of Christ until he was confronted by the Lord himself. The Way, as it was called until it became Christianity, was viewed as a threat to the worship of all the various political and domestic gods and goddesses that were popular throughout the regions and cities of the Roman empire where Paul and other evangelists delivered the Gospel in the decades after Christ’s resurrection.

With one vision Constantine gave Christianity the imperial blessing. That led to a spate of bloodshed. The crusades of 11th and 12th centuries were strongly religion based, Christianity against Islam. The rise of the 16th century Protestant Reformation under Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and Cromwell and the resultant Counter Reformation saw a lot of religious conflict based on pride and bragging rights. The Church waged the Inquisition against both Islam and Judaism.

The American Revolution had its religious side. The expansion west and the conflict with the indigenous Native Americans was sometimes as religious as it was territorial. The American Civil War had religious adherents on both sides. Some aspects of European colonization of South America, Africa, and Asia were religion driven. And the 19th century world mission initiative often had Christians going against religions perceived as pagan. Much of the conflict of the world today pits religious world views against each other.

So we Christians are not really sure what to do with brash triumphalism we see in Elijah’s rout of the prophets of Baal. It is one thing to be sure of the faith that we hold. It is another to brandish that faith as a weapon. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church’s attempted protests at funerals for military personnel, natural disaster victims and victims of human inflicted evil are a case in point. Some share their views and many more are appalled and ashamed of them. Add to that the increasing bent towards individualistic and private faith, and what we have is an introverted faith. We keep it to ourselves.

Even within communities of faith we may not feel safe to raise the questions we have, share our doubts and wonderings, offer the views we currently hold, confess that we have changed our minds about some application of faith, or admit that we don’t know something about the faith. We keep it all to ourselves.

If everyone would just believe like we do. If we would all agree on what we believe. We no longer have many of the details of faith in common, even within the church. We find that frustrating, vexing, threatening.

Yet our faith that keeps to itself, our introverted faith, is no longer attractive. On the one hand people don’t want conflict. On the other, people like to have something to believe in, some system of belief on which to hang the strands of their life, some system that makes sense. If we sheepishly, defensively, protectively keep it to ourselves, how will someone else ever find out.

I’ve been reading Gordon McDonald’s book, Who Stole My Church, which is about a pastor working with a group of church leaders to envision how to be faithful to God, and to the details of the faith they love deeply, and yet be open to ways to make the faith accessible and inviting to new generations of potential believers. The pastor talks about the era when everything was rational and orderly. All you had to do was walk a person through the Four Spiritual Laws and they would see their existence as sinners, know their need for the saving grace of Christ, and could then pray the prayer of confession and commitment that would signify their conversion to Christ. The great revivals of Billy Sunday, Dwight L. Moody, and Billy Graham capitalized on this process. People came and people believed. Then they found a place to belong.

The last half century has seen a sea change in the way people react to matters of faith. It is less mind and more heart, less rationality and more emotionality. The rapid and extensive change in the way the world perceives itself and operates has shifted the axis of human reality in the direction of relationships. Curiously that is a lot like the way Jesus did faith. He related to people. He didn’t demand, “Believe this way,” before ministering to them. He met them where they were and he celebrated the occasions when they understood God apart from all the institutional language and tradition. The centurion in the gospel reading understood how God worked and he wasn’t part of the chosen people. He was further ahead in faith than many who were steeped in it.

Our understanding of faith has to grow beyond the unabashed bragging about how great God is, to looking for the ways that people who don’t yet know God or who are estranged from God already know something about the love and grace and peace of God.  We also need to move out of an introverted faith to a strength of faith like Paul’s which enabled him to know what he knew about God and not be threatened by the fact that some people watered down their faith with false doctrines and worldly ways or that they could not be bullied into belief. God doesn’t want a bragging faith or a shy faith. God wants strong faith that stands up to the ways of the world and at the same time sees in the ways of the world points of intersection where God is active in the lives of not-yet-believers.

Christ has set the pattern for the church’s mission. And the good news is alive outside the church. Thanks be to God.

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission.

The Inclusive Spirit

The Inclusive Spirit
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b;
Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27

I go through this routine every year as I prepare worship for Pentecost: Do I have all the place names read as part of the Acts lesson? They are a mouthful. Not every mouth can spit them out in an orderly sensible way. It’s like reading all the names in the “begats” from Numbers, Matthew or Luke. May be I should just edit the text to say, “And how is it that, each of us, in our own native language, hear them speaking about God's deeds of power?” That would just delete all the names.

Another choice that presents itself is to replace the unfamiliar ancient names with contemporary ones, so that the passage might read something like this: “And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?  Portugese, Mexicans, Ethiopians, and residents of Montenegro, Japan and China, Poland and Australia, Patagonia and Pakistan, Egypt and Libya, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Gentiles and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power.” Modern day place names don’t trip off the tongue any easier than ancient ones.

So what is with all those names, regardless of whether they are ancient or modern? It’s Luke’s attempt to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit of God, as well as the Gospel which the Spirit unleashes and empowers, is universal, is for everyone, is for enemies as well as friends, is for foreigners as well as homebodies, is for people not yet met as well as bosom buddies. There is no one who cannot access the Spirit or be accessed by the Spirit. The Spirit is God’s witness that God desires to be in contact with everyone. Not some, not just the deserving, not just the beautiful, not just the poor or the rich, not just the politically savvy, not just the religious elite, not just the smaller sizes to whom  Abercrombie and Fitch prefers to sell. Everyone. All.

And that means that there are a lot of things that are different among all those diverse people. And the Spirit doesn’t play games with those things. The Spirit enables a variety of gifts which are necessary for the useful and efficient spread of the Gospel through human agency. But those gifts are spread evenly across all the lines of division that human beings would lay down: language, race, gender, nationality, education, economic status, political persuasion, physical capability.

The Spirit breaks down the divisions that we build to include and exclude, to separate and conquer, to esteem and to belittle, to shame and to promote. The Spirit unites and celebrates what we have in common: one body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

The gift of the Spirit to the church in particular and the world in general is all part of God’s grand design. Remember the words of the psalmist, in No. 24: The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it. That’s the same message as the psalmist gave in No. 104, from which our reading today came. God’s creative work extends from heaven to earth. The psalmist has a long list of things that God has created: clouds, winds, fire, water, cattle, plants, people, wine, oil, bread, trees, birds, goats, moon, sun, darkness, light, lions. O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

God has designed everything in wisdom. In Hebrew, wisdom is more than knowledge. It includes technical aptitude and construction skill. God is the divine engineer as well as the architect. Creating out of nothing is an art. God dreams, God imagines, God envisions, God thinks, and God tinkers. That is Spirit-work. That is God inviting our participation in the ongoing work of creating order out of chaos, life out death, joy out of mourning, wholeness out of pieces, love out of indifference.

We see that in the image of the Leviathan. The ancient world thought of Leviathan as a great chaos monster, a terrifying image, a piece of early science fiction if you will: Godzilla, Jurassic Park, and Jaws all rolled into one. Yet the psalmist sees that with God the Leviathan is as harmless as a bath toy, a simple rubber duck floating in bath bubbles.

God doesn’t just design in wisdom. God also nourishes everything that God creates. God doesn’t abandon creation. Even in the midst of the rubble of a collapsed building in Bangladesh, or tornado broken homes in Texas, car bombings in Damascus, fighting in South Sudan, rambunctious rocketry in North Korea, or global warmed rising sea water in the Maldives. God nourishes the world – all the world – with the presence of the Spirit. God gives his creatures exactly what they need for life.

The Spirit is a spirit of generosity. The tongues of flame that descended were not sparingly given. They touched everyone. The Spirit is not to be hoarded any more than anything else in all of creation. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives that is that we are torn apart.” Brueggemann says that what tears us apart is the conflict between scarcity and abundance. We are torn between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief that the things of life are limited. As a result we become greedy, mean, unneighborly.

The gift of the Spirit at Pentecost was – and is – God’s affirmation that there is more than enough of the truly important things to go around. They cover the world. They are for everyone. The cup of life overflows; surely God’s goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. We shall dwell in the house of the Lord as long as we have breath, and beyond.

All this, God freely offers us. The Spirit overflows. Brueggemann says that there is something like a table prayer in the midst of these verses. God is thanked for giving “food in due season” and filling all of his creatures “with good things.” The psalmist describes God as the great respirator, breathing life into the world. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.

The first Christians discovered all this abundance in the midst of the Pentecost experience. The Holy Spirit rushed like a wind into the gathering of the apostles. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Pentecost is about the generosity of God. The message of the Gospel is for all people, is available in all languages that were then known. And Christians continue to bring the gospel into the languages of the world, one dialect at a time. No wonder the crowd was amazed and perplexed and astonished. Here was something so important, so special, so particular, that it couldn’t be bottled up in one language, one society, one nation, one synagogue.

The breath of God fills everyone with good things and creates something new, unimaginable. The church was blessed to be multi-cultural, multilingual, multi-generational, international, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.

From the outside Pentecost looks like a mess. But from the inside, it is pure genius, designed by God, nourished by God, freely offered by God, and so fully abundant that it swept through Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, to Rome, Europe, Asia and beyond. It is still sweeping today as, against all human odds, the Spirit grows the faith in ever expanding numbers in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, and in places where to believe anything other than another faith is a cause for death. The flames of Pentecost have been fanned across the world and across the centuries. They are here, even in our midst, even in our time, even in our lives. The Spirit of God is inclusive, abundant, effervescent. The Spirit of God is life itself.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Praise the Lord!


Sources:
Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity.” Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999.
Homiletics, May-June 2013.

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

In the After-Glow of Easter

In the After-Glow of Easter
John 17:20-26;
Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21


It was easy to get caught up in the fervor of all the “Alleluias” on Easter Day. Worship does itself. We know the story, although it is always good to hear it again. We are in the mood for the occasion. It is special, with lilies and tulips, boutonnieres and corsages, new clothes, and visiting family. “The Lord is risen!” trips off our tongues so wonderfully well. And we really do affirm it.

But now it is the forty-third day after the Resurrection of Christ. The Easter exuberance has waned. The flowers have faded and withered. Easter is just a memory. What did we eat and where? Who were we with?

Added to that, the church calendar says that last Thursday commemorates Christ’s Ascension. The risen Christ isn’t with us any more. He’s gone off and left us. And two white-robed men appeared and had the nerve to say to us, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Where else are we going to look if not toward heaven? And if Jesus is coming back that way, shouldn’t we be looking that direction?

So not only are we in the dying after-glow of Easter, the one who made it light up so well has left us in the darkness of the world. After all, wasn’t Easter about lighting the darkness? Didn’t Jesus the Christ, God’s only Son, cross the barrier of death and return triumphant not only over what kills the physical body, but also over what snuffs out the eternal spark of the divine image in us? Now he’s up and gone away. What good is a risen Savior if he isn’t with us?

Well, yes, he did tell us that if he went and prepared a place for us, he would come again and take us to himself, so that where he is, there we may be also (John 14:3). I guess that is all well and good, but it sure leaves us in an in-between time, after resurrection and before return. And we have been in this time for ever. Not just “you-and-me” we, but lots of other “we”s – generations of people who heard about Jesus and were blessed because they believed in him even though they never met him face to face. So what are we supposed to do, while we wait, while our bodies give out in the endless waiting for eternity?

The closing words of Jesus’ last prayer with his disciples before he was arrested and crucified helps us to know what to do during this in-between time, this eternal waiting. Jesus prays for the remaining disciples (Judas had already left to make his final betrayal arrangements). He includes the close hangers-on, the women and others, in his prayer as well. Jesus widens his prayer. He prays for the innumerable multitude of people in countless generations who will come to know of him because the disciples will be spiritually compelled to remember him and teach about him after the pain of crucifixion and the shock of resurrection has come and gone.

Jesus prays for a unity, a oneness already modeled by the Son and the Father, a oneness which will be so compelling that the world will know that Jesus was sent by the Father to be with us and to save us and to love us just as God has loved him. Jesus further prays that those whom the Father has given to him will be with him in his place of glory. They will witness his eternal and abiding glory which is the gift of God’s love. In that divine love believers cannot be separated from Christ or from God.

Well, Lord, we are not one, and as far as any of us can see, it isn’t going to happen, not sooner, not later neither.

It’s true. Our eyes don’t deceive us. We aren’t one. And it isn’t for lack of trying. But the oneness which Jesus talks about isn’t human oneness. Human beings will never unify themselves. The power of sin and evil will always thwart every attempt by human beings to be united. There’s a force field set up by sin that keeps us from doing it. It’s all we can do to unite two people in marriage, and we don’t do that very well. One out of two, isn’t that the current average? Fifty percent doesn’t constitute a passing grade. Batting .500 may be fantastic for a baseball player, but the gospel deserves better.

The unity for which Jesus prays comes through divine will and action. The harder we try, the harder we fail. But God brings about the kind of oneness that God desires and affirms. It is a oneness that creates some strange companions in this life’s journey of faith. After all, Peter had no intention of giving the gospel to those pork-eating gentiles of Cornelius’ household or any other house, but God told him it was all right to do it. Saul was the least likely candidate for winning people to Christ, but that’s what God had in mind for him. Let’s face it, we can’t even imagine who all God is planning to unite us with. And if some unchurched people knew who it was that God was going to unite them with, they wouldn’t be very keen either, I’m sure.

The three key concepts which Christ leaves us with – belief, unity, and love – are crucial, and vague. They roll so easily off the tongue. We use them like a giant game of keep-away, tossing indefinable faith in Christ from one to another one term after another, and we little understand what we’re talking about. I don’t purport to know all the ins and outs of those things, and you haven’t the time to sit here until we do figure them out completely. Perhaps brevity will stimulate your thoughts better than completeness.

As far as the gospel-writer John is concerned, belief is always focused in relation to Jesus Christ:  “Those who believe in him are not condemned” (3:18). True belief in Jesus means perceiving and confessing something of the vital – unique – relationship between him and God. Belief also has consequences. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ as God’s Son will do the work which Jesus himself did in the name of his Father. That’s daunting. That’s scary. Through our belief in Jesus, which we proclaimed through baptism, confirmation, and profession of faith, we have taken on the ministry which Jesus himself did. It sets a mind to thinking:  What did I do yesterday, last week, last month that was Jesus’ ministry? Ask yourself that every evening as you prepare for bed, or on Saturday night when you prepare yourself for Sunday’s worship. There’s a set-up for the prayer of confession if ever there was one.

Then there’s unity. No one ever said unity’s easy. Unity is more than the harmony of a single congregation. Jesus said he had other folds of sheep who listen to his voice. John makes no pretense of calling for one mega-church to serve the world. Rather unity is multi-dimensional. Unity has to do with divine-human relations and with human-to-human relationships. All unity is the result of God’s power, and it has a purpose: so that the world may believe that God has sent Jesus. That’s the final outcome of the unity that God is bringing about, universal belief that Jesus is the Christ sent from God. There’s a whopping pile of stuff we need to repent of, stuff that we throw up before potential believers that confuses the true unity which God seeks. Forgive us, Lord.

Like Paul’s big three at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, this threesome includes love. Perhaps only in tennis and the Fourth Gospel can we really be certain what this word “love” means. In tennis, love means zero, no points. For Jesus, according to John, love means to will the well-being of others to the degree that one would give one’s own life for the benefit of others (15:13). That has been his ministry, from day one. “I give you a new commandment:  ...just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (13:34). His words of resurrection greeting to the trembling disciples reflect that love:  “Peace be with you” (20:19). Such love serves as a testimony to “the world” concerning Jesus Christ.

So maybe we haven’t got the energy that we used to have, even 43 days ago when we got up early to go to discover that the world’s entombment of saving grace had failed miserably. The cares of the world weighed like a feather back then. Now their weight has grown to crushing. Yet Jesus’ words are remembered: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

With belief, unity, and love – embodied in us – the after-glow of Easter can and will be strong, warm, and inviting, that the world may know and believe.

The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission.

Begin with the End in Mind

Begin with the End in Mind
John 14:23-29;
Revelation 21:10; 21:22-22:5; Acts 16:9-15; John 5:1-9

Whenever we use the onboard GPS system in our automobile or search for directions on Google Maps, we have to put in the destination. The nice thing is the current programs allow us to alter the route. On the computer screen we can drag the suggested route to include a stop along the way at the bakery or Aunt Millie’s house. That doesn’t change where we are going, just the path we use to get there.

In Stephen Covey’s well-known book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he tells us the second Habit is very simple: “Begin with the End in Mind.” Or, in other words, determine where you want to end up in the future, and plan the present in light of those goals. Covey makes the shift from the Google Map kind of geography to the map of human geography, human fulfillment. What is the end that each of us have in mind for our lives? I often joke that I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Others echo that same sentiment.

There is some truth to the notion that we haven’t reached our final purpose. Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister, says in her current book, Following the Path, that there are actually three calls in life. The first is the call to adulthood. As we move into the season of graduations – Ohio State’s is today, with President Obama bringing the commencement address – we think of all the graduates wondering if they will get a job to pay off the college debt, let alone get a job in the field for which they have trained. Chittister says that the “culture is full of criteria for success that have almost nothing to do with happiness, with Aristotle’s notion of ‘virtuous activity,’ with the recognition that we have all been born to make the world a better because we have been here.”(1)

She goes on to say that the culture demands that we get money, or power, or prestige, at least; “get the trappings of the good the life, the rumor of the great life, the reputation of success, the culture says, and that will be enough.” Except that it isn’t. And the result is that we are a culture of misfits, because we are accustomed to becoming things we aren’t.

Chittister’s second call is the mid-life crisis when we have outgrown the young life that we thought would go on forever and we find within us a whole new person. We get stuck in a rut that is comfortable and complacent and is a creeping kind of death. We realize that we haven’t gone where we thought we would. It may pay the bills, but does nothing for the spirit. Chittister says of this point in life: “Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is poor preparation for living. It equips us only for disappointment or, more likely, for shock. To live well, to be mentally healthy, we must learn to realize that life is a work in process.”(2) What she says is that somewhere in the course of the years between the first and second calls, we chose static and confused it with stable. We failed to change with the changes around us that prodded change within us at well.

I’ll return to Chittister’s third call in a moment. I want to pause here to look at the man at the pool of Beth-zatha. This pool has been found and excavated by archaeologists. It is 315 feet long, trapezoidal in shape and between 165 and 220 feet wide. That’s about the size of a football field. It was identified in part by the porticoes, in which, as John tells us, many invalids lay waiting for healing. Beth-zatha pool (which means ‘house of mercy’) was evidently roiled up periodically by an intermittent spring. The theory was that if you were first into the water you would be healed. There is no proof for that theory. But the man in our text believed it for 38 years!

That is a long time. Perhaps he had grown used to the waiting. He may have given into despair, who knows? We could look down on his paralysis at helping himself, but we, too, invest so much hope in external attempts at security – money: our IRA’s; power: our guns; prestige: our delusions of control – that we might as well be invalids ourselves. It is worth noting that this man’s years of waiting roughly correspond to the years of Israel’s journey in the wilderness. More importantly his healing is a sign of resurrection, a path from death to life.(3)

The man didn’t know Jesus at all, did not ask Jesus for healing, and faith was no pre-requisite for what Jesus did. It was not about whether he was worthy. Jesus asked him one simple question: “Do you want to be healed?” The man did not answer the question, but started listing of excuses: “I have no one to out me in the pool; someone always gets there ahead of me, etc. etc.” Jesus was not interested in the litany of excuses, and simply said, “Stand up, take your mat, and walk. You don’t need the pool.” The man was healed, took up his mat and walked out of Beth-zatha.

Do you want to be healed? Do you know where you are going? What is the end for which you are living?

Resurrection. New life. That’s where we are supposed to be heading. Once in a while when I read a novel, I will read the last couple of pages first. They might or might tell me something about the ending. Even if they don’t, the fun is not in the outcome butin experiencing what happened first and how it proceeds to the conclusion. We do that with scripture. We know the stories. We know the high points if not all the details. We need to remember where we are going. Revelation tells us where we are going:

The angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ...  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in [the city], and his servants will worship him; ... they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

We know the end of the story. We know where we are headed. And we know who we are headed there with. Jesus has promised that the Paraclete – Comforter, Advocate, Companion – will go there with us. And we are going to where God reigns.

Princeton Seminary professor Darrell Gruder writes,

A definitive answer to the question, ‘What is the reign of God?’ cannot be given. But we can at least sketch some of its contours by listening to the Old Testament’s prophetic forecasts of the coming day of God and the prophets’ expectations of God’s intended future for the world. Philosopher Arthur Holmes summarized that prophetic vision as shalom. It envisions a world characterized by peace, justice, and celebration. Shalom, the overarching vision of the future, means “peace,” but not merely peace as the cessation of hostilities. Instead, shalom envisions the full prosperity of a people of God living under the covenant of God’s demanding care and compassion as the rule.(4) 

We all know Revelation 21, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth....” What would it be if we localized that? “I saw the holy city, God’s New Waverly, coming down out of heaven ...” What would our ‘new’ city look like, envisioned in light of God’s vision of hope? This is an exercise in ‘borrowing the eyes of God,’ as the German theologian Dorothee Soelle describes our mystical sight. We see our world as God sees it. This is what happens in Revelation’s New Jerusalem vision.

Gruder picks up the theme:

Eschatology is not only about the end of the world. It is about the future breaking in today with an alternative order known as the reign of God. The announcement of Jesus that in his coming the kingdom of God had drawn near (Mark 1:14-15) was a declaration that God’s future—the eschaton—was present in the world.(6)

Like Paul seeing the vision of invitation to evangelize Macedonia, we are called, beckoned into God’s future which is already here, right now.

That brings us back to Chittister’s third call. She says that the secret of life is the willingness to grow into something that is beyond our present. The third call, leaving behind all the cosmetics of life – titles and money, positions and schedules, civic committees and public service activities – is the call to completion.(7) We are constantly trying to explain, define “shalom.” “Peace” doesn’t cover all the possibilities. We are called to be complete, to be whole, to be at peace with the image of God entrusted to us. We are called to stop making excuses, be resurrected to the life that Christ freely offers us, take up our mats, and live in the knowledge that God’s saving work is happening right now in the new creation which is bathed in God’s light- and life-giving love.

We know the end of the story. We know where we are going. We have the end in mind. Don’t just think it. Do it now.

(1) Joan Chittister, Following the Path : The Search for a Life of Passion, Purpose and Joy (New York: Image, 2012), p. 115.
(2) Ibid., p. 120.
(3) J. Shannon Webster, “Do We Want to Be Healed,” www.midrash@joinhands.com, Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 10:01 PM.
(4) Darrel Gruder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 90-91.
(5) Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. 166.
(6) Gruder, op.cit.
(7) Chittister, op. cit.

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission.