The duties of this position include but are not limited to: 1) direct and schedule chancel choir to sing at least 2 Sundays a month; 2) schedule special music for summer months; 3) be available and schedule groups for special services i.e. Christmas Eve, Good Friday, etc.  Compensation for this position is $5,415 which includes 41 Sundays during the regular season and 11 summer Sundays. For further information and/or to apply please call or e-mail the church office at 989-662-6314 or auburnumc@sbcglobal.net.

Duane M. Harris

February 26, 2012

Text:  Mark 1:9-15

Title:  “Falling Upward”

          If you go to Israel today and stand on the mound of what was ancient Jericho and look westward, you would see the imposing cliffs on the edge of the Judean Wilderness.  If you look carefully, you can see the outlines of several buildings constructed near the top on the cliffs themselves.  Blending in with the dark sand-colored cliffs, it looks as if they were built on the goat trails because they were built on the face of cliffs.  Constructed by monks, they continue to mark the place people have believed Jesus was led by the Spirit following his baptism, according to Mark’s version.  He went to the wilderness in those barren hills where no tree grows, where the grazing animals must travel continually in order to forage enough of the sparse grasses to survive.  Jesus went there, tempted by Satan to struggle with the future, with himself, with the temptations to use the power given him in ways that were possible for him, but were not in keeping with God’s will for him.

            Monks living in the monastery on the Mt. of Temptation have been concerned about the hills becoming a major tourist attraction like the Mt. of Temptation Restaurant built on the plain below has become.  The last time we were in Israel, I read an article that indicated investors have spent millions of dollars in their attempts to lure tourists to the site.  A cable car had been built by developers that could whisk tourists to the top in a mere 5 minutes, rather than the 30 minutes using the traditional hiking path.  The Greek Orthodox monastery was built there in 1874 on the ruins of a 12th century church.  It contains a cave where it is said Jesus resisted the invitation to turn stones into bread.  When long-suffering pilgrims make the trek up the path, it has been the practice of the monks to offer refreshments to the few people who would come.  But they weren’t sure what  they would do when this cable car makes it possible for 625 tourists an hour to visit.

            We have a tendency in our culture to look for the short cuts.  We want it fast and easy.  We want it cheap.  And we want the best.  Why walk when you can ride?  Why use the US Post Office that takes several days when you can email someone in a few seconds?  We want immediate satisfaction and we want good results. 

            But there are problems with this short-cut seeking, ease of living frenzy.  It can lead to habits of rapid thinking and living that leave little room for reflection or contemplation. 

For example, when I read the gospel for this morning earlier this week, I hardly noticed the first sentence. 

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

Just a quick line describing the movement of Jesus from Nazareth to the Jordan.  So what? 

Well, from Nazareth to the Mt. of Temptation, it’s about a 70-mile walk; about two hours by bus.  But to walk it took days.  When was the last time I walked 5 miles, let alone 70?   This is an example of a biblical sound bite, like a quick line in an email.  I wonder what happened in those days of hiking to the Jordan.  Did he have anyone with him as he walked?  Did he stop and take a drink or camp beside the cool, clear spring at Ein Harod?  As he walked through the valleys, did he know the warm sun on his face or were the clouds hovering and threatening rain?  When he passed by the well-populated Roman City of Beit Shean with its characteristic Roman amphitheater and long market street, did he stop and see a play or purchase some fruit from the local farmers along the column-lined street?  Was he fully aware of his future before his baptism?  A lot of time and experience is hidden in one sentence, and it’s very easy to speed up the pace by glossing over it.

            However, tending the soul is not a fast-paced affair.  It requires an inner slowing down, giving time for thoughts and needs to catch up with us.  Tending the soul is not a matter of going faster. 

            Rabbi Levi saw a man running in the street, and asked him, “Why do you run?”  He replied, “I am running after my good fortune!”  Rabbi Levi tells him, “Silly man, your good fortune has been trying to chase you, but you are running too fast.”

            Every email I send out includes a quote that reminds me of the importance of slowing down.  It goes like this: 

“There is a kind of anxiety that is like the sense of impending doom that comes into life when the spirit is crowded by too much movement. It takes time to cultivate the mind. It takes time to grow in wisdom. It takes time to savor the qualities of living. It takes time to feel one’s way into one’s self. It takes time to walk with God.” (The Inward Journey, Howard Thurman)

            Jesus’ walked 70 miles to the Jordan to receive the affirmation from God in baptism only to walk the cliff-clinging trail into the Judean wilderness to allow his good fortune to catch up to him, to contemplate, to pray, to wrestle with Satan and the conflicts placed before him as a result of this newly gained power.  Forty days the Bible says — fasting and praying and wrestling with the devil. . .up on the cliffs where the monks now greet cable car tourists.

            The short-cutting habit can distort us not only in our missing of details and the tending of our inner life but I wonder, too, if doesn’t it also lead to an illusion that life should always be easy, that suffering should not be part of our experience in life.  Cable car tourists have little clue what it means to wrestle with the devil in the wilderness. 

            I liken it to an experience Sigurd Olson wrote about.  Olson was the man primarily responsible for the great gift of the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, an area of some 1.4 million acres preserved for canoeists, kayakers, hikers, cross country skiers and abundant wildlife.  Olson’s soul was planted in the land and the waters of this pristine area.  He’d spent years of his life paddling and portaging from lake to lake.  On one trip into the back country he didn’t have enough time to paddle and portage his way in, so he had someone fly him in to a remote lake.  He said later he felt he hadn’t deserved the experience.  He hadn’t earned it.  It was too easy.  He never flew in again.

            Short-cutting and indulging habits can cause us to settle for too little and to forget that life is a journey not a destination, to forget that nothing worthwhile comes easily and that seeking a relationship with God costs something.  Sometimes it’s very hard.  Seeking first the Kingdom of God is not an easy 5-minute ride up the cable car.  Rather it can be a forty-day wrestling match in the wilderness. 

            Bishop Will Willimon once reflected on Paul’s instruction to members of his congregation to offer themselves as “living sacrifices”, the language we repeat nearly every time we experience communion together.  Willimon says of the Christian life:

“There is nothing easy about it. It takes hard work, weekly, every Sunday work, yes, and suffering. It costs lives. Sunday is dangerous.  Is that why Paul uses the image of sacrifice?”

            Sacrifice in a life of discipleship can be a wearing experience.  It can wear a person out!  How many times I’ve heard someone say how tired they are and sometimes how frustrated they are from serving through the church, myself included.  But God doesn’t invite us to become cable car Christians!  A one-liner I read recently put it well:  “God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage.”  The invitation rather is to take up our cross and follow.  What’s easy about that? 

            Have you ever really wondered why Jesus went to the wilderness to be tempted?  God just affirmed him in his baptism:  ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’  What better way to begin a new venture than to start after having been lifted up and affirmed by God?  Knowing God was supportive why not begin preaching from the strength of that God-given affirmation?  But no, he takes a harder course as he heads for the desert where there’s little food or water, where the living is hard and lonely. 

            Why is that?  The Gospel of Mark says “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”  Is it possible that when it comes to the spiritual life, it’s often necessary to go down before you can go up?  Jesus went down into the baptismal waters before he came up to receive God’s affirmation.  He went down into the temptation wilderness before he came up to proclaim the good news that God’s kingdom was near, “turn your life around and believe the good news!” 

            In January our district superintendent asked the pastors of our district to gather together for a retreat at Lake Louise Retreat Center.  In the midst of the retreat the presenter mentioned a book that had been helpful to him:  Falling Upward:  A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr.  Because I’ve moved into the second half of life having turned 50 a few years ago, I was intrigued and went to Amazon.com when I came home and ordered it.   I’m not finished reading it yet, but the premise of the book is that in order for growth to occur in our spiritual lives most of us have to experience some kind of fall.  And usually it has to be forced upon us otherwise we simply will not change.  Maybe it’s the death of someone we love.  Maybe it’s being demoted.  Maybe it’s a serious illness of some kind.  Maybe it’s a divorce.  Maybe it’s the Spirit driving you to some kind of personal wilderness experience.  And it may happen at different times of a person’s life, but whatever it is, it drives you to your knees, leaves you questioning, causing you to deeply wrestle with the meaning of your life and the direction you will take after that particular fall.  One thing is certain contends the writer:  you will experience a fall at some point in your life.  Everyone does.

            But there is another certainty:  it’s only through experiencing a fall that spiritual growth takes place because most of us will not change by any other means.   It’s one of those paradoxes of the spiritual life.  Jesus preached the paradoxes of the spiritual life over and over again:  the first shall be last and the last first in God’s kingdom.  In God’s kingdom, if you want to be the greatest then you must be servant of all.  In Matthew’s Gospel in response to the disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”, Jesus responded: 

He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  (Matthew 18:2-3)

            Doesn’t make much sense does it?  Being great means going backwards.  Being first is to be last.  To be able to share the good news of God’s kingdom it means getting through the wilderness experience.  To go up requires falling down.  New life comes through dying to the old one.  A cross is born before resurrection happens.

            Richard Rohr writes:  “…It will happen to you!  Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.”  (p. xx)

            It’s the suffering experienced in these falls that send us searching for God, and God will not disappoint.  The Gospel makes it clear God did not leave Jesus alone as “the angels waited on him.”

            This is the first Sunday of Lent.  Our lives may not line up neatly with the church calendar and so maybe you’re not in one of those wilderness periods.  Maybe your spiritual life is rich and fulfilling.  Maybe you feel the closeness of God, the strength and joy of experiencing the presence of God’s Spirit with you.  What a gift it is to be in tune with the Holy One! 

            But some of you may be in the wilderness with Jesus and you’re wrestling with the devil, questions come, temptations arise.  You’ve fallen somehow and you’re searching.  I hope you can take comfort in knowing the falls we experience can lead us to a deeper spiritual life, that the falls are a natural cycle in growing closer to God, that suffering can lead us to new life.  It did for Jesus and it will for us, too.  It’s a paradox of the Christian life.

Duane M. Harris

February 22, 2012

Text:  Matthew 11:28

Title:  “Drop the Squirrel!”

 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  (Matthew 11.28-30)

The idea of letting go of that which encumbers us is–and has been–a basic element of a life of faith since the centuries before and after Jesus of Nazareth walked the hills of Galilee.  God declared to Moses and the Hebrew people:  “You shall have no other gods before me.  4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  (Exodus 20)   It was a declaration clarifying that there is only one God in whom security and freedom rests ultimately.  To invest one’s trust in something other than this God is to create an idol, whether we’re talking about forming a calf out of gold, or placing trust in a pistol next to the bed for protection.  The call is to let go of those humanly devised sources of security which are other than God.

            Such a call for yielding to God and God alone echoes through the Bible.  Jesus offers the parable of the seed which unless it dies bears no fruit.  A rich young ruler asking what more he needs to do in order to enter the Kingdom hears the word:  “Go and sell all you have and give to the poor.”  In Luke Jesus tells the parable of a man whose land produced abundantly.

17  And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’

18  Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

19  And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 

20  But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

21  So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

22  He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.

23  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

24  Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

            Letting go and trusting God:  it’s a significant piece of the gospel message but not easy for us.  Jesus’ approach to life is especially a hard sell in a culture like ours in which letting go or yielding seems to be seen as being weak and to be in control is to be strong.  It also seems to be that admitting fault is not seen as the virtue of an honest soul, but rather a sure and certain sign of incompetence or worse.  That, of course, is my opinion, my perception of the way things are in our society.  You may see things differently.

            But scripture teaches us that confession is a good and necessary practice.  It’s good for the soul.  And there are few better examples than Psalm 51:

1 Have mercy on me, O God,

   according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

   blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

   and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,

   and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned,

   and done what is evil in your sight,

            This one who knows God who offers steadfast love and abundant mercy admits to God that he has done wrong.  He has separated himself from God, which is a good working definition of sin.  And this confession comes with a request for help, for change:

6 You desire truth in the inward being;

   therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

   wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

   and put a new and right* spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me away from your presence,

   and do not take your holy spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

   and sustain in me a willing* spirit.

            This is a plea to be restored, to be free of the inner junk we carry, to be able to let go of the things that weigh us down and free us to be the people God has created us to be.  It’s a plea to be in right relationship with God again with a clean heart.

            A friend of mine was driving down the road one day in his Geo Tracker when he came upon a seagull in the middle of the road picking at a dead squirrel.  Bruce was traveling at a high rate of speed.  When the seagull noticed him coming, the bird took the squirrel in its beak and tried to fly.  The squirrel weighed him down so much, however, it couldn’t get very high off the road.  As Bruce approached, it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to stop in time, nor would the gull get high enough to avoid the collision, so Bruce found himself shouting:  “Drop the squirrel!  Drop the squirrel, you idiot!”  The bird apparently listened, dropped the squirrel, and as it did so, it immediately rose above the Tracker and missed being injured or killed.

            Bruce said to me, “You know, that became a symbol for me.  Sometimes we need to let go of some baggage in our lives in order to soar.  For some of us, there are things in our lives to which we cling that need to be released in order for us to be free.”

            The Christian faith calls us to place our trust in God in all things and to let go of that which keeps us from doing so.  It may be a fierce independence.  It may be a long held anger.  It may be a deeply held dislike of yourself.  It might be a purposeful avoidance of God.  It might be something else of which only you are aware.  Are you carrying some baggage you need to let go of in order to be right with God and right with yourself, something that’s weighing you down?  Each of you has a luggage tag in your bulletin.  Sue will play some quiet music for a few minutes, and as she does consider what it is you may need to be free of within yourself in order for God to create in you a clean heart.  If there is something you want to let go of bring it forward and light it from the Christ candle and drop it in the stainless steel urn.  And then if you like you can kneel at the chancel rail to receive the imposition of ashes.  You may kneel and pray at the rail as long as you like.

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.