Duane M. Harris

February 19, 2012

Text:  Mark 9:2-9

Title: “Glimpses”

            Every weeknight, RSTLNE are the letters given the winning player in the final round on Wheel of Fortune.  Every winner is given the same letters night after night, week after week.  Each winner, however, gets to choose three additional letters.  The object, of course, is to attempt to find as many letters as possible in order to reveal the hidden word or words.  The person who comes up with the word or words wins.

I’m not a regular fan of the show but one night it was couples’ night.  A Marine and his wife were playing.  Vanna had turned a few letters for the previous couple, but they struck out on their third try.   The Marine and his wife had a streak going.  After each letter was revealed they got a better glimpse.  One piece at a time until they were missing only two letters.  The category was TV personalities or something like that.  Vanna had turned enough letters that you could read:  “Aunt Bea, O _ _ e, Sheriff Andy Taylor.”  It was obvious that the Marine and his wife just didn’t get it.  It looked as if they had begun to get some kind of feel for it, but they just weren’t sure.  The other players, however, had faces that lit up with recognition.  It was absolutely clear when they recognized the answer to the puzzle.  The smiles and small, anxious jumps told the story.  

The faith experience is a bit like that:  something hidden.  We’re given glimpses.  Sometimes the answer is clear: a prayer is surprisingly answered, a call is confirmed, and we’re transformed by it.  Sometimes we’re almost there, but just aren’t sure.  Other times we’re dumb as a stump, and we just don’t get it — like Jesus’ disciples often were, like Peter was in the mountaintop transfiguration experience with Jesus.  He didn’t understand what this was about.

A life of faith is a journey.  It’s not a destination to which we arrive and we’re settled there.  Suddenly we have it all, understand everything fully, have a clear vision of what’s ahead.  The life of faith for most of us is more like an experience of having one letter turned at a time with the knowledge and trust that God seeks and invites us into a relationship which–when we do get it–transforms life for all of us.  When those moments of recognition of the hidden presence of God come, people cannot help but be changed.  It’s what happened to Elijah, Moses, and the disciples who witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration.  After the resurrection, they understood.  They knew Jesus was God’s beloved Son and that it meant he would suffer as the Messiah.  Though just a chapter before –chapter 8 in the Gospel according to Mark–Jesus foretells of his death and resurrection and Peter rebuked him for it.  Jesus responded with a rebuke of his own:  “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  Sometimes Peter just didn’t get Jesus, but when he did finally know him and who Jesus was–the beloved of God– he was never the same.  His life was completely changed.

It’s what happened to my pastor who became my friend, mentor and eventually my colleague, the Rev. Dalton Bishop.  I was fortunate enough to spend all day with him, his son and daughter-in-law, at a hospital in Holly after he’d suffered a severe stroke not long before his death.  I had the good fortune to tell him I loved him and to say thank you and to follow his ambulance as he was moved to a hospice care center.  He was clear about life-support:  he didn’t want anything.  At 86 years of age he was anxious to see what was awaiting him on the other side of life.  He’d been telling me that for years.  He so deeply trusted the One to whom he had given himself 67 years before that he was unafraid to die.  And it happened on Monday.

Dalton was one of those people who turned letters for me and stood on the mountain with me when I’d get a glimpse of God.  He did that for the many people with whom he spent time.  Dalton gave people glimpses of God.

After he retired and I had finished seminary and had come back to Michigan, we used to meet twice a month for lunch, conversation and prayer, a practice that provided rich moments for both of us.  He was always interested in new thoughts and ideas about God reflected in younger theologians.  I was interested in gleaning from him the wealth of experiences and the well of wisdom he carried with him.  It was good for both of us. 

Over the course of the 24 years we knew each other, there was one string he played upon over and over again:  his conviction about having a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  What a gift Christ had been in his life.  To have this relationship completely changed his life!  How much he wanted others to share in it.  How much he gave himself to making that happen for people.

It happened to me.  It happened to me because he gave me glimpses of God.  I asked him once, if you could choose one story to describe God, what would that story be?  He said, “There once was a man with two sons.  The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance. . . .  and he went and squandered it all. . . and when he came to himself. . .  he came home . . . . and his father. . . ran to him and put his arms around him . . .  ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’  But the father ordered the servants to bring a robe, new shoes, and a ring, to kill the fatted calf and throw a party because ‘My son was lost but is found.  He was dead but is alive again.’”

The Father who forgave a repentant child.  That’s the hidden God Dalton trusted with his life and his death.  That is how Jesus Christ treated him.  That is why Christ died and was raised again:  it had to do with God’s incredible forgiveness, God’s love that is beyond measure.

As I said earlier, before Jesus took the 3 disciples up on the mountain in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus told them he would suffer and be killed.  Peter–like anyone who loves someone understandably might do–refuses to accept the predicted early death of his teacher, friend & Lord.   Few of us want to surrender one we love to death.  In spite of Peter’s refusal to understand coming events, Jesus hand-selected him, James and John to accompany him to the mountain top.  There, Jesus was transfigured and the disciples came to see God in him and to hear the affirmation:  “This is my son, the beloved.  Listen to him!”

Peter apparently wants to camp out with Jesus and build shelters for them.  Perhaps the experience is so good, so fulfilling, he wants to continue to enjoy the experience for a while.  I don’t know.  The Gospel of Mark does say, “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”  But this experience obviously is meant to help the three experience the Spirit of God in Jesus.  It is meant to give Peter, James and John a glimpse of God in Jesus.  It’s another clue to the final answer. 

William F. Buckley, Jr., the columnist and sailor, debated on Nightline with John Dickson, the blind sailor who attempted a solo crossing of the Atlantic.  Buckley was critical and derisive of Dickson.  But Dickson replied calmly to Ted Koppel:  “His eyes may work, but he doesn’t have much vision.” 

Like Dickson’s understanding of vision, faith is not about physical sight.  People watching Jesus and his hikers descending the mountain that day may have seen four ordinary men just out for a day hike with no idea about the experience they’d just had up there.  And the people who walked in the Big Boy restaurant every evening in Fenten where Dalton frequently enjoyed their fish may have looked at my 86 year old friend and saw just an old man out alone for dinner.  But experiencing the presence of the God changes the whole picture.  Jesus was transformed and so were the disciples when they eventually understood who Jesus was.  

Mountaintop experiences with Christ offer glimpses of God that can lead to transformation.  When we see God not with the limited capabilities of the eyeball, but with the deeper sight of faith, transformation happens.  So watch for the clues.  Jesus is God’s Son, beloved of God, one who has suffered and died in order to save.  Knowing and serving him changes a person.  As we move into the Lenten season, will you and I be aware of the glimpses of Christ around us as we continue this journey of faith together?  Will we allow ourselves to be changed because we have seen God?

Duane M. Harris

February 12, 2012

Text:  Mark 1:40-45

Title:  “Holy Disobedience”

I.       The condition of leprosy.  Who are the lepers in our world?

            It wasn’t something they understood.  They didn’t know what caused it or what cured it.  There was no society bearing its name working to provide funding for a cure.  So how could they possibly know that it was contagious only after long periods of close contact?  All they knew for certain was what it looked like when they saw it and what it did to a person as it progressed.  They saw how in very serious cases it maimed people.  It left them disfigured.  It did ugly, ugly things to people.

            It’s leprosy I’m talking about, and Jesus encountered it more than once throughout his ministry.  It’s not much of an issue for us in our day because it has all but been eliminated; certainly that’s so in our country.  It’s still afflicting people in Africa and I expect Dr. Stevens or Dr. Carr could tell us of other places in which it’s still working its ugliness in human lives, but you and I are not really afraid of leprosy.  Most of us don’t even know what it looks like.

            In Jesus’ day, though, it was a red flag word eliciting immediate and strong feelings of fear, like the word Plague did in the 1200s, or Small Pox in the 1700s, or Aids in the 1900s.­­­ Through the periods of human history we have been afflicted with some conditions or diseases—some ailments—the causes of which were not understood and the cures unknown.  And how do people so often react in such circumstances when something so life-altering and life-threatening is not understood?  The people in Jesus’ day were simply afraid of leprosy.  And fear—whether based in reality or not—can result in cruel behaviors. 

            This really wasn’t new.  In Leviticus God gave Moses instructions in dealing with skin diseases.  Chapters 13 & 14 describe in detail how the priests are to deal with people who had skin outbreaks.  Reading it I wondered how many teenagers had to visit their priest.  It reads:  “When a man or woman has white spots on the skin, the priest is to examine them, and if the spots are dull white, it is a harmless rash that has broken out on the skin; that person is clean.”  (Leviticus 13:38-39).  The priests and the people are given specific instructions when someone has a burn and the skin turns reddish-white, when a boil heals and there’s swelling, when there are sores on the head or chin.  Examination could include up to 14 days of quarantine in order for the priest to determine whether a person is to be clean or unclean.  Some of you will be glad to know God’s instruction for this condition:  “When a man has lost his hair and is bald, he is clean.  If he has lost his hair from the front of his scalp and has a bald forehead, he is clean.”  (Leviticus 13:40-41)

            But in all of this, if a priest determined someone to be unclean, the prescription is not written on a tablet sending you to the pharmacy for meds.  Instead it’s this:  “The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean!  Unclean!’  As long as he has the infection he remains unclean.  He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.”  (Leviticus 13:45-46).

            One source I read said that “in Jesus’ day a leper by law could not get within fifty yards of a clean person.”  And if the leper didn’t cry out as the law said he or she should, others would do it for them:  “Leper!  Leper!”  Stones accompanying the shouts to keep them away because contamination was serious business.  It wasn’t just the disease itself that wounded a person, but the social isolation and loneliness that the law required:  can you imagine?  I wonder what it was like to be a leper in Jesus’ day.  Cut off from family, friends.  Can’t get your hair cut, go to work, or even worship.  I wonder, too, given we Christians believe the Bible is God’s Word for us today, who are the lepers now?  Who are the people we’re afraid of because they may have something we might catch that may injure us or the people we love?  Who are the lepers?  Maybe there have been times in your own life when you’ve experienced feeling ostracized from community or family or church.  Maybe you can identify with this leper just a little.  Or maybe you know someone….someone outside and alone without hope, wondering what will become of his or her life.

II.        The Leper’s approach and Jesus response

            Jesus is making the rounds in Galilee preaching, teaching, driving out demons in the small town villages.  He has already driven out a demon from a man in the synagogue in Capernaum and healed Simon’s mother-in-law in Simon and Andrew’s home.  His reputation growing, people were bringing the sick and demon possessed to him, knowing he could help. 

            It might be that the leper heard something, caught wind of a report that someone named Jesus had this power, had this strength, had this capacity to heal that drove people to him.  It spread like word of mouth like people talk about Mayo or Cleveland Clinics.  Or maybe he saw something, watched from afar, saw someone he knew go into the house sick and come out well.  However the man discovered it, when he had the chance, he disobeyed the law.  Didn’t shout, “Unclean!  Unclean”, warning Jesus.  Instead, he did an extraordinary thing and humbly came close to Jesus, close enough for Jesus to touch him.  It was shocking!  I can imagine people scattering when the leper came near, backing away as if a skunk had wandered into the crowd, backing away just out of spraying range but close enough to still see what was about to happen.  This invader exposed Jesus and anyone near him to a potentially infectious disease that could render them as unclean as he was.  Didn’t he realize what he’d done?!  He disobeyed the law!

            Jesus doesn’t move away.  He’s not afraid.  For this man to act this way in public it’s clear that he is desperate.  Maybe been away from family, friends, church for too long and willing to do whatever it took to be able to sit at a table and eat with family again, get his hair cut and wear new clothes again, go to work again.  But there’s more than mere desperation here.  He has confidence that Jesus can change his life.  He trusts Jesus will not do as others have done and allow their fears to keep him a lonely and desperate man.  Jesus is different.  ‘If you choose, you can make me clean,’ he tells Jesus.  Notice he’s not asking for healing.  He wants to be clean.  Why ask to be clean and not healed, do you suppose?

            Now, Jesus is faced with a decision.   And how does he act given this choice he faces?  He actually touches the man!  He touches him!  Why would you reach out and touch a skunk?!   No one will come near you for days!  In effect that’s what he’s doing.  Why would Jesus risk his own health?  Why would he do something that would make him ritually unclean, presumably unable to have contact with others himself until HE was pronounced clean?  Why would he intentionally disobey the purity laws himself in response to a man who has already done so?  A person just didn’t go around touching lepers!

            The Gospel of Mark describes Jesus’ response with the Greek word “splanchnizomai”.  English translations are very mixed.  The NRSV renders it “moved with pity.”  The NIV says, “filled with compassion.”  The New Jerusalem Bible poorly translates it as “feeling sorry for him.”  Other credible ancient manuscripts prefer a different word that indicates that Jesus’ was moved by anger.  Could he have been angry with the man for putting him in this position?  Angry with the disease itself that results in such a separation that leads to this kind of desperation?  Angry with interpretations of the law that requires a priest’s designation of cleanliness?  More likely, Jesus is moved by all these emotions:  pity, compassion, and anger.

            Whatever emotion or emotions moved Jesus to touch this man, it’s clear this isn’t just a casual office visit to request some antibiotics for strep throat.  Jesus is not a dispassionate dispenser of medication for a common variety bug that many of us suffer from especially this time of year.  There’s passion in this healing.  Jesus is moved by an intense emotional response as he places his healing and cleansing hand on the man.  In this man’s case, Jesus joins the man in holy disobedience that this man might have life again.  And if you’ve ever been a victim of any social designation that leaves you as isolated and lonely as a leper, you know…you know what it’s like to be touched by someone who is not afraid when no one else will.  Jesus crosses the line with this skunk of a man and takes on his uncleanness.  Jesus touch heals:  “I do choose.  Be made clean!”

            In my lifetime and most of yours—I can still hardly believe it!—people of color were considered unclean and lines were drawn.  You remember?  Many of you do.  Public signs in the Jim Crow states designating where people of color could drink, go the bathroom, where they could sit on a public bus or even in church, where they could eat in public places.  Read the book, The Help, or rent the movie.  But the Spirit of Jesus will not stand for such things, and eventually holy disobedience revealed Christ’s presence as those barriers and walls were broken down and are still being broken down today.

            Jesus is not only healer of the body in this man’s life, but he is also healer of the broken places in the social order that keep people “outside the camp” because they are different or considered “unclean”:  maybe the immigrant, the poor, the slow to learn, the social misfits, whoever the lepers of our day are.  Jesus stands ready to heal, ready to use us in holy disobedience—not with a lack of respect, but with a mission–in the words of that old Fannie Crosby hymn–to

               Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,

               snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;

               weep o’er the erring one, lift up the fallen,

               tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save.

               Refrain:

               Rescue the perishing, care for the dying;

               Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.

            And maybe it’s not just about walls in our social order.  Maybe we’re guilty of some of this wall building ourselves in the church.  We’ve been lamenting for years in mainline denominations that young adults don’t seem to be flocking to our sanctuaries.  We’re afraid for the future of the church.  But young adults are different.  They want to change things we’re not comfortable changing.  Some styles of worship are meaningful for them but they aren’t for many of us, so we understandably resist.  

            Author, Michael D. Powell, wrote about this dynamic in church:

The church is not immune to real life. We organize our worship, print an “Order of Worship,” and hope that everything goes as planned. But real life doesn’t follow a bulletin. In a large and very formal church a particular woman visited one Sunday who just wasn’t with the program. She kept shouting out “Amen,” during the sermon. One of the ushers hushed her, but she kept shouting “Amen” until finally the usher approached her and, in a loud whisper asked, “Madam, what are you doing?” “I’m praising the Lord,” she said. To which he responded, “Well, church is no place for that sort of thing.”

(Michael D. Powell, Reach Out and Touch Somebody)

            The leper is now healed, and Jesus is unclean.  And Jesus says something peculiar to the man. 

43After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’

What was he warning him about and why did he do it sternly?  Jesus sounds serious, almost threatening.  “Don’t say anything to anyone!”  “Go show yourself to the priest!”  “Do it!”  Maybe because the man would not be allowed in the community until the priest gave him the official stamp of approval?  Maybe because Jesus didn’t want to be inundated with more people to heal than he could possibly handle?  Maybe because he didn’t want to be known only as a miracle worker?  Maybe all of the above.

III.       Leper’s reaction

            But the man can’t keep quiet!  He’s just been healed, cleansed, free to return to family, friends, community, church, work.  Jesus gave him his life back.  How can he keep from singing?

            You have to wonder why Jesus gave him that order in the first place.  Didn’t God try that with Adam and Eve at the beginning?  “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”  (Genesis 3:3)  As Dr. Phil likes to ask, “How’s that working for ya?”  It didn’t work!  Eve did it anyway and then Adam!

            So not only does the man disobey the purity laws when he approaches Jesus in the first place, he disobeys Jesus’ order not to tell anyone, too!  And maybe that’s holy disobedience at work, too.  The man couldn’t help himself.  He had to tell others about Jesus. 

            Is it really so difficult to understand?  Don’t we do the same whenever we have good news to tell about some problem in our lives that’s been resolved?  Being healed of cancer, discovering someone covered your debt, receiving that much wanted and needed job, finding someone who loves you as you are, a heavy burden is lifted, somebody does a random act of kindness, “It’s a Wonderful Life” kind of life discovery, really trusting Christ wants wholeness for you and for all people:  a person can’t keep quiet, can he or she?  Can you?

Jesus disobeys the purity laws by touching and healing the leper.  The leper disobeys Jesus by telling everyone he can find.  When is disobedience holy?  And who are the people forced to live outside our “camp” because of our fears, people whom Jesus would touch and call us to receive back into the community?  These are the questions I hear from God’s Word today.

Duane M. Harris

February 5, 2012

Text: Isaiah 40:21-31

Title: “Have You Forgotten?”

I.  The experience of feeling forgotten by God

            They were worn out!  Exhausted!  Homes gone.  Their Temple destroyed.  The government dismantled.  People were missing, maybe dead, maybe taken somewhere else as the conquerors scattered the people of Israel.  Hauled them away to another country as exiles after the Babylonians defeated them.  They thought their God was greater than the Babylonians’ god, that Yahweh would protect them, but they became refugees from the land God promised them and their ancestors. 

1 By the rivers of Babylon, [Psalm 137 says] —

   there we sat down and there we wept

   when we remembered Zion.

2 On the willows there

   we hung up our harps.

3 For there our captors

   asked us for songs,

and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,

   ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

4 How could we sing the Lord’s song

   in a foreign land?

            Maybe you’ll agree with me that it’s hard for us to feel the depth of pain the people of Israel experienced.  After all we live as citizens of a superpower.  Yes, we have our enemies, but when was the last time you felt deeply afraid of losing your home, your possessions, your church to an invading army?  Have you ever been afraid you and your family might be hauled away and forced to live in another country?  Maybe the Cold War was as close as most of us have come.  Otherwise I know I haven’t experienced that kind of fear.  How about you? 

But that’s the backdrop for Isaiah’s prophetic word as he describes God who

29 …gives power to the faint,

   and strengthens the powerless.

30 Even youths will faint and be weary,

   and the young will fall exhausted;

            The people lost everything!  They feel powerless, and even the teenagers who normally have boundless energy are faint and weary and exhausted from such trauma.  No hope!  No promise!  Certainly not in the mood to sing “the Lord’s song in a foreign land.”

            Maybe we don’t know what it’s like to lose everything to an invading superpower like Babylon, but most of us know what it’s like to experience loss, what it’s like to feel personal pain, what it feels like to be so disoriented we’re not sure what tomorrow will bring, or maybe sometimes it’s just about being exhausted by the pressures of life.  Isn’t that a connecting point to the people of Israel to whom God is speaking through Isaiah?  We know what loss feels like.  It’s painful.  And we know what disorientation feels like, especially in these difficult economic times when some have had their worlds turned upside down, when hopes and dreams have been diminished by economic necessity.  It’s painful, painful stuff.  We grow weary, faint and sometimes fall exhausted in those periods of our lives.   Maybe you’re in the midst of one of those periods or experiences now.  Maybe not.  But I expect most of us know what God is asking when God says in Isaiah:

27 Why do you say, …

‘My way is hidden from the Lord,

   and my right is disregarded by my God’?

            I doubt that I’m the only one who has wondered where God is when life brings painful experiences am I?  The people of Israel thought God wasn’t paying attention, that God “disregarded” them.  Otherwise why would they experience such weariness?  If they were the chosen people why would God allow this to happen to them?  If God is good and all-powerful, then why does God allow evil to exist?  The age-old question of theodicy.  It’s a question older than Job.  Why do bad things happen to good people?   It’s a question that often occupies the heart of anyone who has experienced unjust or inexplicable pain or maybe even just outright exhaustion from the pressures life sometimes brings to bear.

II.  God’s Reputation Restored

            Isaiah knows people hurt.  So does God.  Therefore, he doesn’t tell them to just snap out of it.  Lift themselves up by their own proverbial bootstraps and get moving.  Instead, Isaiah works to remind the people who God is in order to restore God’s reputation with them because they think God has forgotten them and is ignoring their plight. 

            Have you ever found yourself there, thinking God has forgotten you or ignores you because of your plight?   You try to be faithful, try to be a good person and do the right things in life, but you find yourself in some kind of a hole.  And when you’re in it, it’s hard to see beyond it.  It’s hard to see God’s hand in it.  Where do we need God’s reputation restored in our lives?

            A.  Remember that God is creator and Lord of history

            To begin with, Isaiah asks the people a series of questions that echo through the centuries and are just as relevant to our ears as they were to the people in Isaiah’s time:

   Have you not known? Have you not heard?

   Has it not been told you from the beginning?

   Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

One scholar says Isaiah is pointing out the fact that the people–and we–are amnesiacs.  “Theological amnesia,” he says, “is the kind of problem that causes us to fall apart every time a crisis comes.  It is what happens when you hear the dreaded ‘cancer’ word or the doctor tells you they found a spot on your lung.  Some of us whine.  Others of us worry in desperate silence.  Like the …exiles, we wonder whether God hasn’t gone off and left us all together.”  (p. 316-317, Feasting on the Word, Year B:  Volume 1) 

            They forget–and we forget–what God has done and who God is and so Isaiah asks these questions almost with a tone of incredulity:  “Don’t you remember?  Haven’t you known about God since you were taught in Sunday school as a child?  Can’t you remember or understand who God is as it’s been told from the very beginning?”

            God is the creator of all that is.  And, like Psalm 111 from last week’s sermon, Isaiah speaks of the power and greatness of God

who sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

   and spreads them like a tent to live in;

23 who brings princes to naught,

   and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,

   scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,

when he blows upon them, and they wither,

   and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

            Isaiah reminds these hurting people–and us–that “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.”  He reminds us of Psalm 103

As for mortals, their days are like grass;

   they flourish like a flower of the field; (Psalm 103.15)

And though the powerful can seem invincible, God “makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.”  After all, where are Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, or Hosni Mubarek?  All invincible for years. But now?  The Lord is King of kings.  As the angel Gabriel proclaimed to Mary at the annunciation:  “…and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ (Luke 1:33)

            Remember, God is the Creator and the Lord of history, Isaiah reminds the people of Israel.  Remember!

B.  God is Incomparable

            The second thing to remember is that God is incomparable. 

25 To whom then will you compare me,

   or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:

   Who created these?

He who brings out their host and numbers them,

   calling them all by name;

This is the God who said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  This is the God who said “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.  (Genesis 1)

because he is great in strength, [Isaiah goes on],

   mighty in power,

   not one is missing.

This is God of the universe whose power is beyond compare, and yet God is also particular in knowing all of creation—“not one is missing”.  I like what I read from one commentator on this passage:  “Just think: the God of the galaxy on the other side of the universe is the same God who cares for your cat.”  (Homiletical Thoughts for February 5, 2012, Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, 2012-01-30 by David von Schlichten).  There is no one who compares with God.

III.  God provides the strength to go on

            The third proclamation Isaiah makes about God is that though you and I might grow faint and weary and experience exhaustion, God does not.  We are not God, of course.  We’re not in the sandals of the exiles either, but we do know what it is to be faint and weary and feel exhausted as we move along on our journey through life.  There’s no shortage of things that can wear us down:

When we sit in the hospital room for days and nights tending to the needs of someone we love, it’s completely exhausting.  You’d think that wouldn’t be so because most of what we do is sit, but over the years I’ve come to know it’s true for most people. 

            The funeral is over, the long list of funeral planning is complete, all the family, friends and neighbors visiting, sharing, listening, the service and burial over.  Now you’re alone.  Completely worn out.

            Listen to the news consistently and it can cause us to lose the bounce in our step. 

And other things closer to home can result in losing our vigor:  problems at work, relationship struggles, worries about our children, unexpected and unwelcome interruptions in our plans, health issues we didn’t ask for or expect. 

Even work in the church can make us weary.  I read one description of church “…as the place where you go to be told week after week that you are not doing enough for God and that you have got to do more — and be given precious little instruction for how to do that. That’s tiring!”  (Homileticsonline.com)

            The prophet Isaiah addresses people who are worn out.  In addition to reminding them of who God is, what does he advise them to do?  “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.”  “Wait for the Lord.”  What does a person need when your weary and faint?  Rest.  Can it be that Isaiah is reminding them not only of who God is but also that in their exhaustion it’s okay to take a break.  In fact, it’s time for them to let go for a time and let God handle the matter.  Trust God with it.  And by doing so, their strength will be renewed.  Life and energy will be rejuvenated.

            Carl Price served as senior pastor of First UMC in Midland for 25 years.  Carl was and still is a lover of creation and in his late 50’s he started leading day-hiking trips in some of the national parks for those from the church who wanted to participate.  He and Pat would sometimes get 40-50 people heading out west somewhere. Often there was a collection of teenagers among them. 

            On one of those first trips, Carl said the teens not surprisingly took off on the trail, leaving all the old folks behind.  Pat called them, “the jackrabbits”.  They’d run on ahead and meet them at whatever the destination was for that particular hike.  They’d all have lunch and head back.  (Incidentally, here’s a shameless plug for the day hiking trip to Rocky Mountain National Park described in the bulletin for any adults—young and old—who would like to experience the Rocky Mountains.)

            By the time they all got back to base camp, the teens were exhausted.  They’d go back to their tents, tired and sore and crash while Carl and Pat and the adults—though slower—went on to prepare dinner, clean up and go to a ranger’s lecture.  After the second day of this pattern, the teens came to Carl as a group that evening and asked him, “Dr. Price, would you be willing to set the pace for us on the trail tomorrow?”  Carl told me this story a couple of times and each time, his face lit up with a great smile and he’d end it with a “Yes!!!”, fist clenched and elbow dropped in an expression celebrating the “old man” had prevailed.

those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

   they shall walk and not faint.

            Though in our weariness we may sometimes forget who God is or perhaps think that God has forgotten us, Isaiah reminds us that God is the Creator and the Lord of history, that there is no one comparable to God and that when we are weary and exhausted on our journey through life, we can trust God who will allow us to rest when we need to and provide what we need to carry on and walk again and not faint.  God will set the pace when we trust.

Duane M. Harris

January 29, 2012 

Text: Psalm 111

Title: “Unbridled Praise!”

          When I was serving in Owosso, a young man and woman came to the church to be married there.  Over the course of the premarital counseling time I learned that he worked for NASA.  He’s a computer scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  The Goddard Space Flight Center works on developing and operating unmanned scientific spacecraft for NASA.  At the time, the Hubble Telescope was making big news with the incredible photographs it was sending back to earth and we began talking about that and some of the other projects Gary was working on with the agency.  He picked up on my interest in space exploration and so when he went back to Washington, D.C. after their wedding, a cardboard mail tube arrived at the church with three posters.  One of them was from a photograph of another galaxy taken by the Hubble.  The second was an image of the earth taken by an orbiting satellite, and the third was taken on February 14, 1990 when the exploratory spacecraft Voyager 1 was turned around to take a photograph of the earth from about 4 billion miles away.  From that distance the earth is just a pale blue dot.  You can hardly see it on the poster.

            The psalmist didn’t know about this poster.   He didn’t know about photography or that one day human beings would actually build something that could go that far from the earth to take a photograph.    He didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun.  The earth was the center then.  But he did know about God who created such an incredible universe.  He knew about God who has done amazing things not only by creating such an amazing place in which to live but also by getting involved in the lives of the Hebrew people, freeing them from the tyranny of slavery in Egypt and leading them to a land of milk and honey.  He knew the God who was both transcendent–whose infinite being we can never fully comprehend–and also the God about whom Paul witnessed to the Athenians in the book of Acts:   “indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27-28).  The psalmist knew God and God’s works and in a moment of Spirit-filled inspiration, he wrote this psalm.  It is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving.  It’s a psalm constructed by using the Hebrew alphabet.  An acrostic poem, each line in the Hebrew text begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which means it’s about praising God from A-Z.  It’s about praising God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.  Because it is an acrostic, it is not a story or a logical argument, but a series of thoughts about who God is and what God has done for which the psalmist is giving praise to God.  There are three phrases I want to focus on this morning.

II.  “…with my whole heart”.

            The first phrase has to do with the heart.  The heart refers metaphorically to the inner self.  Out of the heart comes all a person’s thoughts and feelings.  It’s the place of conscience, of understanding, reason and imagination.  When God asked Solomon what God could do for him, Solomon responded, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil”.  An understanding mind has to do with the heart out of which comes understanding.

            In the Gospel according to Mark, a scribe asked Jesus,

‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’  (Mark 12)

            In the Gospel according to Luke, it’s a bit different.

25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.* ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 26He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ 27He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ 28And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ 

(Luke 10)

            In Mark, the question is which commandment is the greatest of all of them.  In Luke, the question has to do with how to inherit eternal life.  The answer to both questions has to do what God says way back in Deuteronomy after the 10 commandments are issued.  It’s the great commandment, the Shema:  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” 

            The psalmist gives thanks with his whole heart, with everything he has, in praise for all that God has done.  Is there anything or are there many things for which you can genuinely give thanks with your whole heart?  What are the things or who are the people or what are the experiences in your life that bring you joy, the kind of joy that just makes you want to sing with abandon?  When you think of them you can’t help but smile and can hardly contain yourself sometimes when you reflect on the person or the experience or just the life God has given you. 

            It’s like the gift received when a group of children stand up here and they sing with exuberance some song of the faith that lifts us and brings smiles to our faces.  It’s like the joy two people in love feel when a child has been born.  It’s like the moment a deployed soldier is reunited with his or her family after having been in Iraq for a year.   It’s like the feeling I get when I stand at the top of Hallet’s Peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park and get a glimpse of the vastness of the mountains and really experience how small I am and how great God is, not even mentioning that this vastness is nothing compared to the vastness known in looking at the “pale blue dot” from nearly 4 billion miles away.  “How Great Thou Art!  How Great Thou Art!  Then sings my soul my savior God to thee!”  It’s just incredible how great God is!

            And yet as great as God is, the Bible reminds us that this incomprehensible God is knowable.  This God wants a relationship with human beings like us.  In the same section of Deuteronomy from which the Shema comes, Moses tells the people: 

“From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.”  (Deut. 4:29)

In Jeremiah, God says,

“Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart” (29:12-13).

            What does it mean to seek someone with all your heart, to give your heart, the whole of who you are to someone?  Doesn’t it mean in part that we become vulnerable?  Because when we share all of who we are with someone, our strengths are shared but our weaknesses also become exposed, and there is the possibility of being hurt, and hurt badly either because of loss or a broken relationship.  Yet, there is also the unmatchable gift of love in the midst of such vulnerability, a love based on trust and forgiveness and the joy of sharing who we are with someone else and they with us. 

            The psalmist “gives thanks to the Lord with his whole heart” in unbridled praise in this poem of profound love for God and invites us all to join in that praise that flows from a love for God that cannot be contained.  Have you ever experienced that kind of love for God, the kind of joy that leaves you singing with abandon?

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.

Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

II.  “Studied by all”

            The second phrase for us to reflect on has to do with studying.  The psalmist goes on:  “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”  “Studied by all who delight in them.”  According to Webster, “delight” as a verb means “to take great pleasure, …to give keen enjoyment, …or to give joy or satisfaction.”  People who experience delight ponder all the works of God like Psalm 8, one of my favorites:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

   the moon and the stars that you have established;

4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

   mortals that you care for them?

            Studying God’s works by pondering the “pale blue dot” or catching the view from a window seat at 30,000 feet or standing on a mountain top to take in the vastness and our place in all of it, raises this question and causes me to wonder with the psalmist, “what are we, Lord, that you are mindful of us, mortals that you care for us?”  It’s incredible!  It’s just incredible this life God has given us!

            But studying God’s works is about more than pondering God’s creation.  It’s about remembering what God has done:  “He has gained renown for his wonderful deeds.”  The words here stir up memories of the Exodus.  They have to do with God’s action in providing “food for those who fear him” as God provided quail and dewy manna for the Hebrews as they wandered in the wilderness following their flight from Egypt; “in giving them the heritage of the nations”, by leading them to a land of their own; and through the giving of the law:  “all his precepts are trustworthy”.  God has been involved with this people, to study God’s involvement is to remember and to worship the One who has saved them.

            Can you look back and remember along with the psalmist and see how God has been involved in the life of the world and in your own life?  What are the markers that point to God’s care for you?  How can you express your thanks? 

III.  Wisdom

            The third and final reflection has to do with the last verse:  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.  “Fear” is not about terror as in the fear instilled by a “terrorist” or a horror film.  Who would be attracted to God if that were so?  The psalmist would hardly be singing the praises of a God who acts like a terrorist, would he?  Gerhard von Rad, one of the great OT theologians of the last generation says, the fear of the Lord includes both the experience of awe and the irresistible attraction to the graciousness of God, but it is not a state of anxiety.  And so awe, reverence, irresistible attraction:  these are words that describe the experience of one who is in love with God.  Have you experienced that kind of love for God?

            Giving thanks with my whole heart, studying the works of God, and holding God in awe and wonder, love and praise as it’s sung in that great old hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”:  all lead us to God’s praise that endures forever.  Let’s sing that praise again this morning as we join in the next hymn.  Will you stand if you’re able and let’s praise God together?

Duane M. Harris

January 22, 2012

Text: Mark 1:14-20

Title: “A Moment and a Lifetime”

          Rev. Doug Mercier was the dean of the bishop’s cabinet some years ago.  He spoke on the conference floor beginning with a story.  The setting was a saloon in a dusty town in the old west.  The place packed with people when suddenly someone ran through the swinging double half-doors and yelled, “Everybody!  Take cover!  Big John’s coming to town!”  Everybody scattered.  Men jumped on their horses kicking up clouds of dust as they rode to the hills.   Some ran to their houses, locked themselves in.  The saloon empty in matter of seconds.

            Just as the dust settled on the street, a big man pushed open the saloon doors.  The rattle of his spurs sounded with every heavy step on the thick wood floor.  Grizzled and mean looking, he walked up to the bar and said, “Bar tender!  Pour me some whiskey!”   A man reached up from behind the bar, put a glass on the bar, and poured the whiskey, still on his knees.  The big man took hold of the glass and slugged it down.  One swallow.  The bar tender asked him, “W-w-w-w-would you like another?”  The man said, “Are you kidding?  Didn’t you hear?  No time for that.  Big John’s coming to town!”

            Doug went on to say:  “Sometimes that’s how people think about their district superintendent.”

            Sometimes when I hear Jesus calling disciples, I think of Doug’s story.   Let me explain.  Jesus is walking along the pebble-covered beach of the lake.  The water is clear blue.  Beautiful.  Cold.  Wind blows to the west off the Golan Heights, cliff-like land formations on the east side of the lake.  Fisherman all along the shore.  Taking care of their equipment and the night’s catch.  He calls them:  “Follow me and I’ll make you fish for people.”  First Peter and Andrew:  two brothers who may have been less well-off than James and John because Mark doesn’t say anything about them having boats.  Just shore fisherman, throwing circular nets weighted down by stones.  As they sink the net captures the fish on the way to the bottom. 

            Then James and John, also brothers, who leave their father and hired men, which suggests they are part of a thriving family business.  Immediately, they leave it all to follow Jesus. 

            Is that what it means to be a follower of Jesus?  Leaving everything without a struggle?  Without making sure families were cared for?  Without Peter checking with his wife?   James and John not having or taking time to make sure the family business is covered?  Follow immediately?  And what does it mean to fish for people anyway?  For some, it might make Jesus sound like Big John.  What if Jesus asked that of me?  Leave everything:  my family, my business, my work without any consideration?

        Maybe I’ve got it wrong, but there I times I wonder if we’re so afraid God will ask us to give something up that we can’t part with, or so unsure about what God asks of us–that God is far too demanding with expectations so high we’ll never meet them–that we resist or ignore questions like:

            What is God calling me to do?

            What does it mean in my life to be called by and to follow Jesus?

            When I was pondering whether or not I was sensing an authentic call from God to enter the ordained ministry, one of the sticking points–one of my fears–had to do with what I would have to give up in order to be a pastor.  When I confessed to my own pastor that I was struggling with this problem, he convinced me that God didn’t want me to be someone I could not be.  God wanted, he said, the person God created me to be.  God wanted the real me, not me pretending or trying to pretend to be the image of a pastor I thought should be.  Jesus, after all, didn’t ask the first disciples to stop being fishermen, just be a different kind of fishermen.  The requirement to follow wasn’t that they instantaneously be transformed into someone they couldn’t or didn’t want to be.  Jesus wanted them as they were for who they were.  He didn’t ask them to change who they were before they followed him.  He simply asked them to follow.   He invited them to trust him with their lives.   My gracious pastor, my friend, freed me that day.  He freed me to respond with an affirming, “yes”, to the call to ordained ministry.

            Every baptized person is, after all, called to follow Jesus.  Every person.  Not that long ago the General Conference of the UMC clarified who ministers are.  Do you know?  Every baptized person is a minister.  That’s what our Book of Discipline says.  If you are baptized, you have either said “yes” to Christ or someone has said “yes” for you and raised you in the faith to the best of their ability.  Saying “yes” to Jesus means saying “yes” to God and that initial “yes” means a change for a lifetime.  It’s more than a moment of salvation but rather a new identity as people who become fishers of people.

            A man stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world.  “Dear God,” he cried out, “look at all the suffering and distress in the world.  Why don’t you send help?”

            God responded:  “I did send help. I sent you.”

            You remember Jonah?  God wanted him to go to Nineveh and proclaim the Word of the Lord calling the Ninevites to repent.  But Jonah wasn’t interested.  Unlike the disciples and like all those saloon goers upon hearing of Big John coming, he cleared out of town and headed for Tarshish on a ship.  But God wasn’t easily dissuaded, didn’t give up on Jonah, and somehow—you know the story—Jonah became convinced that he needed to do what God has asked him to do.

            And Moses?  He wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when God called him to go to Pharaoh.  Remember?

10 But Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ 11Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.’ 13But he said, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else.’   (Exodus 4)

You know the rest of the story.

            What about Jeremiah, the great prophet?  He, too, resisted God’s call.  Remember?

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,

5 ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’

6Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ 7But the Lord said to me,

‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”;

for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

and you shall speak whatever I command you.

8 Do not be afraid of them,

for I am with you to deliver you,

says the Lord.’

                        (Jeremiah 1)

            Whenever God calls someone to service and there is resistance, there is always, always the promise:  “I am with you.”  And then it’s a matter of trusting God in that moment of decision that will shape a lifetime.  Becoming a faithful disciple is about a moment AND a lifetime.

            In the Gospel according to Mark, that first decision to follow Jesus needs to be reaffirmed and sometimes corrected over and over again.  At Caesarea Philippi Peter confesses his faith in Jesus as the Christ, but he doesn’t have faith that Jesus is the suffering Messiah.  That will take a lifetime for him to understand.  (8:27-33).  When Peter is on the mountain and Jesus is transfigured, Peter recognizes how good it is to be with Jesus as he offers to build some shelters for them all to stay there, but he forgets that the primary task is to follow Jesus—that will take a lifetime.  When Jesus is taken from the Garden of Gethsemane and Peter follows from behind, concealed in the crowd, warming his hands by the fire, a moment of fear threatens to unravel years of friendship and faithfulness.  At the very end when Jesus is hanging on the cross, Andrew, Peter, James and John–who all immediately left their nets in that initial moment of being called by Jesus–are nowhere to be found.  Even then, God doesn’t give up on them.  Being a faithful disciple is about a moment AND a lifetime.  Sometimes the moments are nothing to be proud of.  Disciples fail and fall, but those moments are not the final word.  Jesus goes before them—and us– for a lifetime, an eternity.

            Every baptized person is called by the shore-walking, Jesus:  “Come, follow me.”  A momentary decision is called for:  will you follow him or not?  Will you choose his way of being in the world knowing that God is already here as he said God was?  When the answer is “yes”, it will change your life, maybe not every moment but it will change your life.

            An observer asked the great preacher, Lyman Beecher, how it was that he had so many converts.  Dr. Beecher answered, “I preach on Sunday and I have 400 members who preach every day, and that is the way with the blessing of God, that we are doing so well.”  (William R. Key, “The ‘What Is’ and ‘How to” of Evangelism.”)

            D.T. Niles, the great Asian Christian theologian defined evangelism as        “One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

            When I think of Jesus call of the disciples and Niles’ definition of evangelism, the face of Bob Hogan comes to mind.  Bob is a gruff old gent.  Irish.  A marine.  Semper Fi.  He was a member of the St. Luke’s congregation.  Served on the “Welcomers”, a group of people whose responsibility it was to follow up on visitors.  Their job was to keep track of who visited on Sunday.  They were then to get the names and addresses off the registration pads every week, go to the homes on Sunday afternoon, knock on the door and thank them for coming to worship, give them a small packet of information about the church.  Nothing long.  Nothing dramatic.  Less than 10 minutes.  If you asked him if he saw himself as an evangelist, he’d adamantly refuse the label.  But I heard him speak up in a group once.  He said, “You know, I remember when the Bruck’s visited the church one Sunday.  I was the one to visit them.  Now, they’re here with their kids almost every Sunday.  They’re involved in the life of the church.  It feels really good to be a part of that.”

            I wonder how many of you are here because someone invited you?  Or how many are here because you visited here and someone made you feel welcome and wanted?  The kind of fishing Jesus calls us to is not an impossible task.  I believe we are called, in the words of one writer, to “…catch folks up in God’s grace, love, and salvation”.  (APA, p. 21)  There’s nothing frightening about that, telling people where to find bread, inviting people to become part of a Christian community.  Jesus’ call echoes through the ages: 

“Come.  Follow me, and I’ll make you fish for people.”

How is God calling you to fulfill that call?  What is God asking of you right now?

Duane M. Harris

January 15, 2011

Text: John 1:43-51

Title: “Finding God”

            He wasn’t the first one that Jesus called.  In fact, Jesus didn’t call him at all.  None of the Gospel accounts list Nathanael as one of the 12.  But here he is in the first chapter of John.  He’s also not so easily impressed as were Andrew and Peter.  After Jesus called him, saying “Follow me”, Philip found Nathanael just as Jesus had found Philip, and Philip told Nathanael about Jesus, the one who fulfilled what the prophets and Moses had written.  But Nathanael, like Thomas, was one of those natural skeptics.  He wasn’t going to buy it just because one of his friends told him so.  He certainly wasn’t about to accept the claim that they had found the messiah, especially when Philip said he was from Nazareth.  No one great came from such a no-account town.  It’s like some ask in this area, “Can anything good come from Saginaw or downtown Flint?”  Such places are not known for turning out great leaders that change the world.  So when Philip finds Nathanael and tells him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth’, he wasn’t biting.  What would you say if someone told you, ‘Hey, Denise, we’ve found Jesus!  He’s back and he’s living in Crump’?

            Nazareth was just a little village.  Nothing much of consequence happened there.  If you wanted action–a place where the power people lived–you would have gone to Sepphoris.  Sepphoris was a major city at the crossroads of the ancient Via Maris—the north/south highway– and the Acre-Tiberius Road—an east/west highway.   Located just over the ridge from Nazareth, it was so important that Herod Antipas made it his capital in 4 BC.  If Philip told him Jesus was the son of Joseph from Sepphoris, Nathanael’s response might have been different.  But no, it was Nazareth, just a non-descript little village where nothing exciting happens and out of which no one exciting comes.  Reminds me of a Facebook friend update of a young adult friend I read a few weeks ago:  “Really wanted to do something fun tonight…but then I realized that I live in Owosso.” 

            Nothing much happening in Nazareth and so when Philip informs Nathanael, all he can manage to say is “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  For Nathanael, Jesus could be nothing more than a simple Jew from a small little place in Galilee whose parents merited no distinction.  The Messiah would certainly have come from a much more credible place, and his parents would have been higher on the social ladder than a skilled trades guy and his unknown wife.

            But Nathanael apparently doesn’t know the God who turns things upside down.  He doesn’t know about the-first-shall-be-last-and-the-last-shall-be-first-God.  He doesn’t know about the God who uses children as a model for those who enter the kingdom.  He doesn’t know about the God who heals the sick, feeds the hungry and tells the poor the good news that God receives and loves them as much as the rich and that the rich have already received their reward.  He doesn’t know about the God who points to a widow dropping her few cents in the offering plate and then he proclaims that she put in more than anyone else.  He doesn’t know about the God who tells angry accusers, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  (John 8)  He doesn’t know about the God who decides—who chooses—to hang on a tree to demonstrate the power and depth of God’s love for all of humankind rather than lead an army or force people to believe, “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”.  He doesn’t know about this God.  But he’s about to….

            Rather than argue with him, what does Philip tell him?  “Come and see”.  It’s the same invitation the Samaritan woman would offer her neighbors a few chapters later in John after having a conversation with Jesus at the well.  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!  He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  When it comes to experiencing Jesus, it’s personal.  You have to see for yourself.

            Thomas Long is a preaching professor at Candler School of Theology in Georgia.  The few times I’ve heard him speak, he was inspiring with his stories of God’s movement in the world.  Moved my heart.  Long tells one such story in one of his books:

A few years ago a church located in a large city decided to turn its gymnasium into a night shelter for homeless people. Every winter there were reports that some of these people, condemned to sleep out in the open, had frozen to death, and so the church made the warmth and safety of its building available without charge. Each evening during the winter, volunteers from the church would spend the night in the shelter, providing food, clothing, and lodging for as many of the homeless as the building would hold. Almost without exception, the volunteers reported that the experience of spending the night with these people from the streets had been far more than an act of dutiful charity. The volunteers had found their own faith strengthened, their own reliance upon the grace of Christ reinforced by the experience.

Several months after the shelter was opened, one of the pastors of the church was being interviewed on a radio talk program. The interviewer was …[very] opinionated …whose biases were quite strong. It became clear during the interview that he felt that the church ought to stick to the business of preaching the old-time gospel and stay away from meddlesome activities like shelters for homeless people. “Now just tell me,” [he said at one point], “where is Jesus in all this?” For a moment the pastor considered silently how to respond, then said calmly, “You just have to be there.”

“Come and see,” said Philip to Nathaniel, and some people do not see because they will not come to those places where one can get an angle of vision, where one can see the grace of Christ at work in the world.
(Thomas G. Long, Shepherds and Bathrobes, CSS Publishing Co.)

            You just have to be there to know Jesus.  You have to come and see for yourself.  People can share their experience of Christ.  They can tell their stories, but you can’t know Christ yourself unless you seek Christ yourself.  It’s like my friend, mentor and pastor, Dalton Bishop, told me years ago.  “Getting to heaven is not like going through a revolving door.  You can’t get there on somebody else’s push.”  You have to put some skin in the game and act.  Jesus, himself, is a man of action.  When Jesus started his public ministry it was from the outset it was an “on-the-road” ministry.  The first invitations to his first disciples were “Follow me” or “Come and see.” Notice, it was not “sit down and listen,” or “kneel and pray.” It was an invitation to movement, to motion, and mission.  “Come and see for yourself”, Philip replied to Nathanael’s skeptical response.  It’s an invitation any one of us can make to people we meet.

            Nathanael accepts the invitation.  And as the two of them approach Jesus, I don’t know what you see, but I see a smile on Jesus’ face as he says loud enough for all to hear, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”  Other translations read “…in whom there is no guile!”  But the intent is the same.  Nathanael is not out to deceive anyone.  He is who he is and doesn’t put on airs for anybody–even Jesus.  Comedian George Burns once said, “Sincerity is the key. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”  But Nathanael is no faker.  That’s one of the qualities that marks him as excellent disciple material.  He’s the real deal.  He has enough integrity to call a spade a spade.   You wouldn’t catch him spreading rumors around the church because he has more integrity than that and would go straight to the source to talk it out as Jesus points out we should do in Matthew 18.  Nathanael probably would have made a terrible poker player but a great friend.

            The other quality that marks Nathanael as excellent disciple material is that he has an open heart.  Had his heart been hard, he would not have accompanied Philip in the first place.  His skepticism and prejudice would have kept him from meeting Jesus.  But he’s open enough–receptive enough–to accept Philip’s invitation and when he makes his way to Jesus he discovers that Jesus has a unique ability:  Jesus can read peoples’ hearts.  He discovers that what the Gospel of John says is true: 

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

…The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  (John 1)

            As the true light, Jesus sees each person in his or her true light.  Jesus saw Nathanael for who he was and praises him for who he is. 

            Don’t we all need that from Christ?  What I mean is that we all carry some baggage.  We all have weaknesses.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  (Romans 3:23)  I don’t think any of us could cast the first stone, could we?  Wouldn’t you like to be recognized for who you really are, deep down?  The good stuff, not the behaviors we sometimes engage in because of habits of thought that have been so engrained we don’t even recognize when we’re doing it or why.  Wouldn’t you like to be known for the real you, the person who isn’t driven by greed or fear or anger or other life-draining forces?  The real you!  The person with a heart open to the grace of God and who smiles at you when you’re coming his way and says, “Hey, there’s Bill, he’s one of the most generous guys you’ll meet.”  Or “Check out Melissa, she’s not afraid to speak her mind and there aren’t many who care for the poor like she does.”  Wouldn’t you like Christ to see through the hard stuff in you and light up your heart by broadcasting who you really are in Christ’s eyes?

            When Jesus tells everyone what he sees in Nathanael, Nathanael can’t help himself.  He just blurts:  “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”  When Christ touches your heart, sees you for who you really are, you can’t help it!  There’s joy and awe.  It’s a moment of truly finding and being found by God.

            And Jesus responds, ‘Very truly, I tell all of you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ 

Those of you who know your Bible, does this remind you of a story in Genesis?  Do the ladder and the angels up front or the hymn we’ll sing in just a few moments give you a hint?  The story of Jacob and his dream.  Jacob, you may remember, was no Nathanael.  He was deceitful.  He was full of guile as he deceived his own father in order to receive Esau’s blessing.  But as he’s running away from home to escape his brother’s wrath, he stops to sleep and there he has a dream.  Genesis describes it this way:

12And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And the Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring;

¹⁶Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ ¹⁷And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’  (Genesis 28)

He called that place Bethel which means “the house of God.” 

When Jesus tells all bystanders, “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,” he alludes to this story of Jacob with one important difference.  Here, Jesus, himself, is the holy place.  Jesus is Bethel, the house of God.  Once you’ve found him, you’ve found God.

Duane M. Harris

January 8, 2011

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

Title: “Eyes to See”

The church was packed, ready for the children’s Christmas program to begin.  Lights were low except for the front of the church where the inn and the stable had been set up, cardboard cutouts with a bit of paint.  Mary and Joseph and the baby made their way up front from the side door.  The shepherds, the kings, some animals and angels were in the back of the church waiting to make their entrance.  I was back there too.  The director that year created a part for the drummer boy, and since I was learning to play the drum, guess who she recruited?  As the narrator narrated and the shepherds did their shepherding, it came time for my friends the kings to make their way to the front in their bathrobe costumes and paper crowns.  They marched up there as everyone sang “We Three Kings” and took their place offering their gifts of gold foil, a wood box someone had made and a ceramic urn.

When my cue came, someone hit the tape player—probably reel to reel back then– and the song started and I made my way up the aisle after those kings,  playing my drum:

“Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum

A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum

Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum

To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

You know the story.  It’s been told in this church for generations and in THE church for centuries.  In fact, we know it so well—we’ve heard it so many times—nothing comes as a surprise to us.  We know the kings come.  We know about the star and the gifts they bring.  We know the story, don’t we?

So often the coming of the wise men brings to mind a favorite, old Appalachian carol.  Maybe you know it:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor ordn’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

These people who came to Jesus wondered as they wandered out under the sky.  And their coming is very provocative.  It’s actually quite shocking really.  So let’s look at who these people were.  First of all, in spite of the carol we sing every year they were not kings.  The Greek word for them is “magoi” which means magi—wise men, not kings.  “Magoi” comes from a Persian word “magush” which is a type of priest in that culture (The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, V. 3, p.766).  And if you read the story carefully, it never says in Matthew that there were 3 of them, just that three gifts were brought:  gold, frankincense and myrrh.  The tradition of three kings came later than Matthew’s Gospel in correlation with the number of gifts given to Jesus.

The number, though, really doesn’t matter because they were people who were open to the ways of God.  They were people who we looking for God to act.  They were seekers, and somehow, some way they trusted God was calling them to act when they saw a sign in the sky.  A comet some scholars say.  Others explain it as a constellation of planets.  Others say it was an ordinary star but these magi had extraordinary sight.  We don’t know exactly what God did with the sky, but somehow these magi came from the east because they had eyes to see the signs of God, eyes that apparently others did not have.  Even the high priests and the scribes, whom Herod consults, the people with the scriptures in their hands didn’t see.  Only these foreigners who did not have the Hebrew scriptures to guide them.  Just a star and their extraordinary sight.

Have you ever noticed extraordinary sight in other people?  Do you know anyone who can look at a situation and somehow see God’s action and put it into simple words and actions?  They have a faith that just easily expresses confidence in God’s movement in their lives or in the lives of others that surprise us and inspire us.  I wonder if they have the eyes of the magi who are able to trust what they saw as God’s call and claim on their lives?  I wonder if they have eyes to see as the magi did?

Dr. Nolen Hudson was a surgeon at the Bay Regional Breast Surgery Center for many years.  I was his pastor for some of those years, and at one point he gave me a tape of a lecture by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.  Dr. Remen is also an author of several books whose grandfather was a rabbi which greatly influenced her spiritual life and her practice of medicine.

There were many stories on that tape, but one of them stood out.  It was told by an Italian psychiatrist who invited people to imagine they were interviewing three men who cut stones for the construction of a great cathedral during the middle ages.   Their job day in and day out was to cut the stones into square blocks – a foot by foot by nine inches.

You watch them work for a while.  Someone brings a stone to each cutter.  They cut it into a block a foot by foot by nine inches.  Another stone is brought to each.  They too are cut.  More stones are brought.

You move up to the first cutter and ask:  “What are you doing, sir?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, you fool?!  They bring me a stone.  I cut it into a block.  They bring me a stone.  I cut it into a block.  I’ve been doing it since I’ve been old enough to hold a hammer and chisel, and I’ll be doing it to the day I die!  Use your eyes!”

You move away from the bitter man to the next cutter:  “What are you doing, sir?”  The man turns with a warm smile on his face and says:  “I am earning a living for my beloved family.  With the money I earn we have built a house to contain our love.  There is good food on the table.  I’m providing a home, a safe and loving place for my family.”

You approach the third cutter and ask:  “What are you doing, sir?”  The cutter turns with a radiant smile, beaming at you.  “I am building here a holy white house where people who have lost their way — people who feel they are alone in the world — can come and be healed and it’ll stand for a thousand years.”

“All three are doing exactly the same thing,” said Dr. Remen.  Yet, their work held vastly different meaning for each.  “Investing a routine task with precious personal meaning opens the routine to the experience of joy,” she said.

Have you known people in each of those three categories?  Some are so negative and pessimistic about their lives, there seldom is an encouraging word.  Some are positive and happy to be making life better for themselves and their families.  Others have an other-worldly joy about them.  They see beyond their circumstances.  Our eyes can tell us a lot, but doesn’t it take more than seeing something to experience something of God in it, to see something eternal in it?  Doesn’t the meaning in our lives have a great deal to do with our own inner sight and what we bring?  Doesn’t it take faith, trust in God to make our lives have deeper meaning?

Going back to the magi.  Shepherds watching them pass by in the fields may have seen a caravan and assumed they were traders.  Maybe they had some family in the area.  Maybe they just wanted to visit the Holy City.  Maybe they had some business to take care of with the government.  Register their camels or something.  But there was something more going on than what shepherds might have seen.

The magi themselves could have seen this astrological oddity and made a note of it, studied it a bit, marveled perhaps and stayed home, but there was more to it than that.  God had somehow offered this sign, and they had enough courage and confidence in God to trust they’d be led to the One who would establish God’s kingdom.  God gave them a sign and they acted upon that sign when they could have stayed home.

Do you ever ask yourself why you come to worship?  Why not stay home?  There may be weeks worship seems repetitious and routine, like cutting stones into blocks.  However, the way we experience it has a great deal to do with the way we look at it and define it for ourselves.  Maybe one week, the music wasn’t great.  But it’s about more than the music.  Maybe the sermon didn’t cut it.  But it’s about more than the sermon.  Maybe the prayers didn’t connect.  But it’s about more than prayers.  As an adult Jesus says later in Matthew’s Gospel:  “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.”  (Matthew 12:6)

God gives us signs and when we’re open to them and trust God is in them isn’t there joy in that?   I wonder if the signs God gives us might be something the worship leaders says in a call to worship or an opening prayer.  I wonder if the signs God gives us might be an honest and authentic welcome by someone sitting next to you when you’ve come here for the first time seeking something that gives you hope that things really will be okay in your life.  I wonder if God’s sign might be a meditative instrumental piece that Sue plays when your soul is so stirred up you can’t stop the thoughts from rushing over you and you want to scream.  But somehow the music becomes a salve that quiets the noise.  Maybe there’s only one sign God gives on a given day, but it’s there.  It just takes eyes to see.

Following a star:  that’s all they did.  But it took extraordinary eyes to see it as a sign from God, a sign to follow that would lead them to God if only they would follow.  What sign is God placing in your life?  What journey might God be calling you to make in order that you will find God?

It’s an old story told so simply in that favorite old carol.

When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor ordn’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

Duane M. Harris

January 1, 2012

Text: Galatians 4:4-7

Title: “Becoming Children Again”

I.          Adoption

She was abandoned on an overpass in China as an infant.  It was clear she was not wanted by her biological parents.  It was as though this little girl’s life didn’t matter.  She had a cleft palate and an eye condition that affected eye movement, leaving them out of synch with each other.  She might have died had it not been for someone finding her and turning her over to authorities who apparently took her to an orphanage.  At least that’s the way I remember the story as told by the adoption agency and shared with the adoptive parents who were members of St. Luke’s when I served there.

I think she was 4 or 5 when Bill and Hope—what a great name for the mother of an adopted child!—began the proceedings to adopt her.  It was a long, arduous process that required a couple of expensive trips to China, but finally they were able to bring her home.  I remember the joy of the congregation that first Sunday they brought Yvonne to worship.  People were so happy that Bill and Hope finally had their second daughter adopted from China.  Mikayla, their first daughter, was now a child of 8 or 9, a beautiful girl, vivacious and just fun to be around.  Fully acclimated to this country and this congregation, she was warmly embraced by her church family, and she them.  And now a second had come to join the clan.  But this little one– I remember– was afraid.  That first Sunday.  All those new people.  So many wanted to hold her and hug her and welcome her into the church family.  She hid behind her new parents, and it appeared she wasn’t too sure about them either.  I can only imagine what it must be like for such a child to be adopted.

What is even more beautiful about this adoption was that the new mom, Hope, had been adopted herself.  Her parents adopted her from the Methodist Children’s Home in Detroit.  Her adoptive mother’s name was—appropriately—Grace.  And it was Grace who modeled the kind of deep and authentic love for an adopted child that I expect had a great deal to do with Hope’s and Bill’s desire to adopt a child themselves.  Adoption was part of the family DNA, if you will.  And it was crystal clear that–once adopted–the children were blessed with the gift of belonging, the gift of caring nurture, the gift of a deep and abiding love that transformed the lives of everyone involved.

Personally, that’s the closest I’ve ever been to adoption, and it was such a privilege to be with this family as they traveled the pathway to receiving children into their lives in this way.  Lynn and I never felt the call to travel that path ourselves, but some of you have done so and you know better than I what that means to the children and what it means to you as adoptive parents.  It changes lives.  It changes the relationship of children with would be adoptive parents, for sure.  That I do know.

B.  Paul on adoption

That is precisely what Paul is trying to convey to the congregation he established in Galatia when he writes

4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

When the fullness of time had come, as when a pregnant woman’s time to give birth has come.  It’s God’s time not ours.  Paul points out that the coming of Christ is like a pivot point between a relationship with God based on obedience to the law and a relationship with God based on grace.  Salvation has been born in God’s Son!  On New Year’s Day when we’re thinking about what has happened in the past year and what may be in store for us in the year to come, this is a great teaching from Paul to ponder because he’s proclaiming loudly and forcefully that Christ’s coming brings a new day, a new reality, a new relationship!  It’s not like the old days or the old ways in which the path to God and God’s salvation could be earned through obedience to the Mosaic Law.  Paul understands a need for redemption from salvation based on law fulfillment.  Christ ushers in a new day under an old promise!

In fact, what is happening in the Galatian congregation has to do with a group of people who came after Paul had firmly established the congregation.  Scholars call them Judaizers.  Paul calls them “the circumcision faction” in 2:12.  These Judaizers or “circumcision faction” were Jewish Christians who came in Paul’s absence and worked to convince the Galatian Christians that having faith in Christ as God’s saving presence was good and right, but it wasn’t enough.  Grace alone was not sufficient to save, according to this group.  Therefore, obedience to the law was added to grace in their teaching.  Consequently, they proclaimed, for example, that circumcisions must be done to all male converts which is the origin of Paul’s designation for this group.  What Paul had originally proclaimed was simply incomplete, according to the Judaizers.

To this affront to the gospel proclamation, Paul responds with vigor and passion as he writes in chapter three:

You foolish Galatians!  Who has bewitched you?  …The only thing I want to learn from you is this:  Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?  Are you so foolish?  Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?

…For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.’  Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law;  for ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

…Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ – in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

This is no soft-pedaling apostle.  On this matter against those who proclaim that grace through faith is not sufficient for salvation, Paul will NOT concede, for we’re all doomed otherwise because we cannot earn our way into salvation.  It’s a gift that comes with the grace of God “…born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem [us all].”  It is only by grace alone through faith alone that we are saved.  Christ’s redemption of us from the law means that those who trust the truth of God’s grace in Christ are “adopted as children”, God’s children.  No longer slaves to the law, God’s children are free.

II.        Inheritance

Bill Moyers was the keynote speaker at the General Synod of the United Church of Christ some years ago.  In his address he spoke about slavery.  He talked about freedom.  He said in that address:

“’I tremble for my country,’ [Thomas Jefferson] wrote, ‘when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever.’  Jefferson knew from his own experience the perversity of owning another person as chattel.  For the hand that wrote those words, ‘All men are created equal’  also [loved] a woman named Sally Hemings.  It is no longer a secret: This learned, philosophical and far-seeing founder had a long-term sexual relationship with his slave, who bore him several children.  DNA confirms it, and even the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in Virginia accepts it.  One guest at Monticello looked up at a dinner one evening and was startled to see a young servant who was the spitting image of the master at the head of the table.  Jefferson never acknowledged those children as his own.  And as he grew older, he relied more and more on slavery to keep him financially afloat.  When he died, his slaves were sold to satisfy his creditors, all except for Sally.  His probaters found in Jefferson’s will an obscure passage, setting her children free.  None of the others.  Just the children of Sally Hemings.  Two of the descendants of those children settled in Ohio, where their own descendants today have increased, some living as blacks, and some as whites.  And two centuries later, despite their common parenting, race still divides them.

But here’s the point.  Jefferson could not really think that the words on that parchment were markers solely for white men of privilege and property who liked port and politics.  He had to know …. that the flesh- and-blood woman in his arms was his equal.  In her desire for life, her longing for liberty and her passion for happiness.

But the law … but the law had been fashioned by white men of wealth and privilege to keep her outside the gate of promise opened by the Declaration of Independence.  She lay in his arms, the arms of its author, but could not travel with him to the promised land.

(Bill Moyers, in a June 23, 2007, keynote address to the General Synod of the United Church of Christ. http://www.ucc.org/news/significant-speeches/moyers-challenges-ucc-drive.html. Retrieved November 13, 2007).

Paul was clear that the law does not lead to the freedom known in the salvation God gives as “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba!  Father!’   So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”  The law has limitations.  It’s not that rule-abiding is wrong.  Clearly, we need them in a just society.  We need them in our families.  It’s just that the law is incomplete when it comes to the salvation God gives.  It is not the path to salvation.  Salvation comes through grace alone by faith alone.  We’re already free.  God has already given the gift.

IV.       Grace alone through faith alone

I remember watching Bill and Hope’s little daughter from China.  For weeks Yvonne hid behind her new parents whenever anyone tried to engage her.  But over time, as she gained trust in her new family, she became freer.  It started with smiles as she’d peek around Bill’s leg whenever someone tried to talk with her.  Then, she came to a point at which she no longer hid behind but stood beside them.  And gradually, over time, she’d let people hug her, pick her up.  When we left St. Luke’s she’d run up to me and give me a hug.  Now, I hear she’s so gregarious people wish she’d quiet down.  She is an adopted child, loved by her new family.  There weren’t any rules she had to abide by in order to receive that gift of adoption.  Two people with love in their hearts initiated the relationship and changed her life forever simply because they experienced love in their own lives from a God who had adopted them and changed their lives forever.  All because a woman named Grace adopted a child named Hope.  What a gift!  What an incredible gift it is to be a child of God!  We are free!  Free to trust our lives to God in a relationship of grace!  We are free to begin again in a new year because God has already adopted us and made us God’s own.  And so in this New Year, beginning today–as Paul wrote in another of his letters–

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (Romans 15.13)

Duane M. Harris

December 25, 2011 

Text:  John 1:1-5

Title:  “Christmas in song”

          Our family was headed to Frankenmuth a day after Christmas one year to have dinner with good friends.  Turned on the radio to 106.2 that only a few days earlier had been playing all Christmas music.  Out of the speakers blared the usual stuff of popular music.  We tried another station.  The same result.  One day after Christmas and it’s all over.  No more celebrating.  No more melancholy dreams of a white Christmas.  No more singing the story. 

            Yet, in the church the story has just begun.  There are twelve days of Christmas, with two Sundays including Christmas day this year.  The singing may stop on the radio stations and in the stores, but it doesn’t stop in the church.  So despite our culture’s strong tendency to influence the church’s observances, I’d like us to spend these moments and sometime following, listening to the stories about and singing the hymns of Christmas. 

            With its message of peace, the celebration of Christ’s birth into the world has been especially meaningful during periods of strife. 

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

            Edmund H. Sears was a Unitarian pastor when he wrote of the angels’ message:  “Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven’s all gracious King.”  The year was 1849.  It was a period of political and social unrest as this country moved steadily toward Civil War.  The Rev. Sears wrote, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” contrasting the message of Christ’s peace with the scourge of war.  It’s a song of hope and faith inviting the singer to soar beyond the immediate trials and tribulations, calling us to “…rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!”  As it’s included in our hymnal, the editors omitted stanza 3 of Sears’ original hymn, possibly because of its direct mention of war, perhaps thinking the topic didn’t belong in a Christmas carol.  With all that’s happening in these days with talk of war, it seems appropriate to hear what Sears wrote over 150 years ago when this country was at war with itself:

                        But with the woes of sin and strife

                           The world has suffered long;

                        Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

                           Two thousand years of wrong;

                        And man, at war with man, hears not

                        The love-song which they bring:

                                    O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

                                       And hear the angels sing!

            The hymn is found on page 218. 

O Little Town of Bethlehem

            On Christmas Eve, 15 years after Sears wrote “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”, Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal pastor who would later become bishop, was in the Holy Land.  It was 1865, the year the Civil War ended.  He visited Bethlehem that night and made a journey on horseback to the shepherd’s field just outside the city.  From there he saw the city:  lying still, “…above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.”

            Three years later as the rector of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia he wrote the hymn remembering that quiet night spent on horseback on the shepherds’ field.  You’ll find it on page 230.

That Boy-Child of Mary

            A missionary pastor in Africa for over twenty years, Tom Colvin adapted a Malawi dance tune for his Christmas story.  “That Boy-Child of Mary” is patterned “after the African practice and understanding that ‘the name that is given to a child is very important in expressing often the hopes for the child or the ‘events’ associated with its birth.’”  If we were in Africa, of course, it would be sung with more freedom and exuberance, with instruments of all kinds, and responsive singing.  We’re not likely to achieve that, but let’s sing it responsively by having the people on the pulpit side of the sanctuary sing the refrain, while the other side will sing the verses.  Page 241.

Silent Night, Holy Night

            On yet another continent, Silent Night was written in 1818 on Christmas Eve.  Joseph Mohr was priest at St. Nicholas’s Church in Oberndorf, Austria.  Mohr wrote the simple poem and gave it to his organist and the town’s music teacher, Franz Gruber, who composed the music in time for the Christmas Eve service.  Unfortunately, the organ broke down that night, so the two – teacher and priest – sang the hymn for the first time as a duet with guitar accompaniment 184 years ago.

            When the organ repairman arrived some time after Christmas, Gruber played the tune as a test of the instrument.  The repairman was so moved by the hymn, he asked for a copy.  It then spread throughout Europe and the United States as Tyrolese singers included it in their performances. 

            The hymn tells the story of Christ’s birth, but moves beyond the basic story:

                                    Son of God, love’s pure light

                                    Radiant beams from thy holy face

                                    With the dawn of redeeming grace

                                    Jesus, Lord, at thy birth

                                    Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

            It’s #239 in your hymnal.

            “…The dawn of redeeming grace”:  that’s what we celebrate in Christmas song.  God incarnate, among us, within us, born in “love’s pure light”.   The songs of the angels reminding us that God’s desire for human life is to live in peace in spite of the discord, threats, and confrontations CNN describes.

                        For Lo! The days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old

                        When with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold

                        When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,

                        And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.

            There are undoubtedly some songs you’d like to send back to the angels that we’ve not yet sung this Christmas season.  So let’s spend some time just singing some of your favorites.

Duane M. Harris

December 24, 2011

Text:  Mark 9:33-37

Title:  “Outside the box:  gentle power”

Mark 9:33-37

There’s a boy on a baseball diamond practicing.  He’s all alone standing in the batter’s box, ball in hand.  He shouts, “I am the greatest player of them all.”            Throws the ball in the air.  It goes up.  He swings hard as he can.  The ball hits home plate with a thud.  Undeterred, he picks up the ball and shouts again, “I am the greatest player of them all.”  Throws the ball up.  It comes down.  He swings as hard as he can.  Again, the ball lands on home plate with a thud.  Still determined, he picks up the ball and shouts, “I am the greatest player of them all.”  Throws the ball.  It comes down.  He swings hard as he can, and once again it lands with a thud.  Strike three.  He picks up the ball and says, “Wow!  I really am the greatest.  I had no idea I could pitch like that!”

There’s something about being great that drives some people.  Mohammed Ali.  Every time I read this story from Mark he comes to mind because the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest among them.  Jesus has just announced for a second time that he will be killed and will rise again.  As they walk the hilly countryside of Galilee on their way to the lakeside town of Capernaum, the disciples discussed who was next in line.  Since Jesus told them he’d be killed, they begin to wonder who’s going to take his place.  Who’s going to lead this new enterprise?  Teach the throngs of people Jesus has been teaching?  Heal the sick?  Challenge the authorities when they attempt to impose oppressive rules?  Who will build upon that which Jesus has begun?  Who was the greatest among them?

It is a natural human condition to seek elevation.  “Survival of the fittest,” as they say.  The drive to survive often means others don’t.  One person succeeding often means others do not.  The competitive spirit so alive in the human heart drives the sports industry, which is so prominent in this country.  Many yearn for the better paying job or the next promotion or a better career.  All of which can imply where we are in life is not good enough.  There must be more.  We can be better.  Who is the greatest?  Aside from Ali, of course.

The way in which we live out our answer to that question determines our motives, our values, our faith.  There is a dark side to some answers, and they are manifest in figures like an Adolf Hitler, or Bernie Madoff or the kind of self-promoting that demonstrates that unfortunate observation that only the fittest survive.  You’ve seen it.  You’ve seen it in the kind of hard heartedness that blinds a person to the harm caused to others in order for one person to ascend to a greater place.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that everyone who does great things, everyone we perceive to be more talented than we may be, every promoted person, everyone receiving merit increases, every honored and respected person is elevated as a result of this hard heartedness.  Some great people are really great human beings.

When Jesus and the disciples reach home at Capernaum and they all sit down in the living room, relaxing after their hike, Jesus asks them what they were talking about that day.

Silence.

They were like children & young teenagers in a car, sitting in the back seat talking as if the parent driving the car couldn’t hear a word.  Have you had that experience?  They’ll talk about everything as if you’re not even present in the car and then marvel – if you choose to tell them – when you know whose kissing who among their circle of friends.  I can see Jesus hiking out front and the twelve back about 20 feet clumped up and arguing in hushed tones.

But when he asked the question, they knew inherently that their concern with greatness was not consistent with who Jesus was.  Like a parent driver, he knew what was going on even without a bionic ear.

Silence.

Then Jesus introduces his object lesson:  “Whoever wants to be first must place himself last of all and be the servant of all.”  He motioned for a child to come and stand near him.  He kneels down and puts his arms around the child.  He went on.  “The person who in my name welcomes one of these children, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not only me but also the one who sent me.”

Notice when the question of greatness entered the room, Jesus didn’t point to the Temple 100 miles to the south, a magnificent structure built by Herod the Great.  Like the Twin Towers it too was destroyed, not by terrorists but by Roman soldiers who dismantled it block by block.   It was a magnificent structure envisioned by one of the greatest builders in the history of that land.  Jesus didn’t point to Herod the Great in this conversation but to an anonymous, vulnerable child with no power to move armies or exact taxes, nothing much to contribute to society except to live and be cared for.  What a strange definition of greatness!

It’s not that there is no order or rank in the sight of God.  It’s just that the order is reversed in God’s eyes.  The vulnerable, the last, the servant of all is first in God’s kingdom or realm as some prefer to call it.  At least that’s what we hear from Jesus in the Gospels.  To welcome one such as this is to welcome God.

Tonight is Christmas Eve.  We have been preparing to welcome God who comes in the form of a vulnerable infant, totally dependent on the good will of human beings, totally at risk of being treated cruelly.  Hardly the image of greatness with his little legs kicking the straw, arms flailing as he screams to be fed, emitting that familiar aroma making it plain that the swaddling clothes needed to be changed.

When God chooses to be incarnate, it’s not in the form of the great builders of structures that may last centuries, even millennia, any one of which is able to be dismantled and hauled off in Billie’s gondolas.   Instead, God chooses to enter the world in the least, the most vulnerable form of human life possible as if to say, “Welcome me.  It’s your only choice.  Either that or let me die.  I’m at your mercy.”

Why would God choose to come in such a human form?  Where is the greatness in such vulnerability?  How can a child be first in God’s eyes?  And how is welcoming a child ever the same thing as welcoming God?

Dennis Benson taught me much about working with youth as I worked with teens as a youth pastor.  He has a real sense of call for the young.  In his book, The Ministry of the Child (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979; believed to be out of print.), he tells this story from his own experience:

A woman in the congregation phoned to let Pastor Dennis know that lumps had been found in her body, and she suspected the worst. He worked late into the night, Saturday, searching for the right text, prayers and words to sustain her until the news came. She sat third row from the front as usual.

Somehow the worship seemed heavy. The warmth he wished to project evaporated. As he launched into his third point on the theme of “hope” a young toddler came down the aisle. The child paused at the third row, turned, then climbed up on the seat beside the woman. He didn’t say anything. He just snuggled in. Her arm encircled him. He responded with a hug. He sat with her only for a minute or two, but when he returned to his parents, warmth and hope once again lived in her eyes. She had received her gospel –her good news– for the day.

Is that what so draws us at Christmas time?   It’s that moment we recognize that salvation is not about competition, not about the hard, cold notion of survival of the fittest.  It’s not about who can build the greatest building or career or GPA or portfolio.  It has nothing to do with who is the greatest in our terms.  Salvation is simply being open to welcoming God.  And maybe at Christmas time the church does a better job–we all do a better job–of recognizing that the God of the manger is not the forceful, controlling, guilt-inflicting Spirit so often portrayed.  Maybe–just maybe–we’re more open to God in this season because God comes as a vulnerable infant waiting for us to simply welcome God’s birth into our lives with no guilt-ridden preaching, no heavy-handed appeals, just a little child who wants to jump up in the pew beside us to snuggle in and be with us through all the question marks that life brings that can so often leave us perplexed and afraid.    Emmanuel:  God with us.