Chosent

Luke 9:1-6, 10:1-11

Ordination of Officers / Commissioning of Mission Workers

June 9, 2013

William G. Carter 

One Sunday, I heard the creation of a new word. We were singing a hymn, and the person next to me was not worried about the words on the page. The print said, “Chosen of the Lord, and precious,” but I am sure he sang, “Chosent.” It was a brand-new word. I think it is a pretty good word – “chosent.”

As far as Jesus is concerned, those who are chosen are sent. They are one and the same. They are not selected by him in order to withdraw from the world. They are picked in order to be deployed. Chosen and sent – or “chosent.”

In the Gospel of Luke, we hear two passages of Jesus sending his followers. First, it is the twelve in his immediate circle – Simon Peter, Judas Iscariot, and the other ten in between. He confers on them his holy authority and sends them out to confront the forces that damage human life. He said, “Proclaim God’s authority over life – and heal whoever you meet.” And off they go. They have pretty good success, and learn a good bit along the way.

Then, once again, he expands the circle, and adds seventy more people. The Lord groups them in pairs and gives them the same commission: “Heal the sick that you find, and declare God’s Authority has come into your midst.”

They came back and said, “Lord, your name has a lot of power!” He smiles and says, “I saw Satan fall out of heaven. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven!” This is the blessing on those who go when he sends them. They are “chosent.”

These ancient stories reveal a deep truth. The God we meet in Jesus Christ is a missionary God. God takes flesh in Jesus because he has a mission to the world. Jesus is sent from heaven to earth. Then Jesus sends those who follow him to continue the mission. It is the same mission: to proclaim God’s Holy Authority and to heal.

To heal what? It is never specified; whatever is ill, or twisted, or broken, or dirty, or infected – that is what God wishes to heal. And this restorative work, this saving work, is never separated from God’s Authority. That is the meaning of the word “kingdom,” which refers to the places where God is the rightful ruler.

On a day when we commission people in our midst to serve as servant-leaders, we affirm the nature of God’s mission, in the name of a God who sends. We are chosen by God in order to be sent to the places where God needs us to serve.

I don’t know about you, but this was impressed on me at an early age. My family went to a church that was always sending people into the mission field. One young couple came back with slides from the Amazon River and spoke about an encounter with piranhas. That made quite an impression on our potluck dinner.

Then I went off to seminary. On the opening day, the dean told us how an entire graduating class in the early 1950's went into the mission field. The president at the time was John Mackay, a former missionary, and he had a great influence on the students. As the academic products of the selfish 1980's, we shrugged it off.

Then we stood in line for the cafeteria and passed by a plaque remembering some graduates of Princeton who were killed in response to their witness. One was shot in India, another thrown off a ship. One was murdered for printing the truth about slavery in St. Louis, another was beaten to death as he marched for civil rights in Selma. It gave us pause, and made us wonder what we would face when we took Jesus seriously.

These seemed like amplified situations, rare and remarkable, and nothing that the normal Christian might ever face. But then I heard Jesus declare after his resurrection, "You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth." That's not a command, but a declaration. If you testify to Jesus, if you believe he is alive rather than dead, if you understand what he continues to do in the world, if you follow him, pursue him, and obey him, then you will be his witnesses. And there's no telling where it will take you.

Around this congregation, we have seen people who hear Christ’s voice, go where they sense he is sending them, and come back changed. I could keep you here all day with the stories, but I would rather send you out to the places where God wants you to be. We have sent people to short-term mission trips, and they come back with stories, not only about the work that they accomplished, but the ways they have been changed.

Or someone will get involved, sometimes after years of watching from the sidelines. Something wakes up within them. Faith goes deeper and love extends wider. The time they spend healing the world is time well spent that also heals some part of them.

I have seen grumpy old men break into laughter when they play kickball with children. I have seen self-absorbed teenagers crack open with compassion when they encounter with people with real needs. I have seen well-settled people come alive with fresh energy when it dawns on them that life is changing, and they cannot stay settled where they were. It is not a stretch to declare that God is probably behind a lot of these disruptions.

Here’s the point: if they had played it safe, if they had shrugged off the invitation in order to honor their own comfort, if they had never gotten out of the easy chair or the cushioned pew, they might have missed the joy of Jesus.

The Bible is full of stories about people on the move. The same God described in that thick, old book is the same God who pushes us, or pulls us, or prompts us, or entices us to make our lives a pilgrimage. We are called closer to the heart of God. We can’t get there if we stay stuck in the same old places.

Maybe that’s why Jesus gives the same directions to the twelve and to the seventy. He says, “Travel lightly. Don’t pack a lot of stuff; the stuff can become a distraction. Don’t slow down to shake the hands of everybody on the way. Don’t worry about taking money; the Gospel’s essential work can be done without a lot of money.”

All he gives us is a word of peace, God’s peace. It’s the peace of the Christmas angels, singing to the shepherds about the great glory of God, and made real in the great gifts of mercy and respect. Whoever you meet is a Child of God, forgiven in Christ, respected by God’s Spirit. That peace is enough to change the room, and it’s the peace that makes people well.

“If you meet people who don’t want this,” said Jesus, “wipe off your feet and keep moving. Don’t waste your time on antagonistic voices or warlike hostilities. No, I send you to declare that God makes peace with the world.”

Once again, we can’t know this unless we get off the couch. In our time, that’s becoming harder and harder for a lot of people to do. A well-meaning person said to me, “When I go home at night, I stay home. My home is my cocoon.” I thought about that, then I asked, “Do you ever think God would like you to get out of your cocoon and become a butterfly?”First, of course, you’ve got to leave the cocoon.

It’s hard to do that, when you have a remote for eight hundred channels, a Home Shopping Network full of stuff you don’t need, a thousand baseball games to watch that you yourself will never play, to say nothing of hundreds of Food Channel recipes that you yourself will never cook. We live in a culture intoxicated with entertainment. Entertainment is a way to smooth over and forget that there are grown-up brothers and sisters who hate each other, or children who go to bed bruised and hungry, or promising students who are put down for how they look or where they live. Christ sends his people into the surrounding towns and says, “Heal the broken people, and proclaim there is a Loving God whose holy ways are peace and well-being for all.” This is our mission, because this is God’s mission, and God gives it to all of us.

We set aside people as church elders to direct us where we need to go. We deploy church deacons to make Christ’s ministry a humane ministry. All of us are part of what God is doing to salvage the world. We are chosen and sent – chosent – to make a difference.

A woman was telling me about something she likes to do. “I volunteer to read stories to children who don’t know where both of their parents are. I do this every Tuesday, and I never cancel out. I want them to know they are loved.”

A man told me yesterday about his work with those recovering from addictions to drugs and alcohol. “Some of them are charged too much money to stay in a halfway house,” he said, “and I want them to be treated fairly as God rebuilds their lives.”

Today we bid God’s peace on three people traveling to Haiti, as they go to show compassion. We send a couple of our own to work all summer with the kids at Camp Lackawanna. Some are going to North Carolina to investigate how our congregation may worship more deeply. Others will work with the children and families of our community to teach God’s love through our Vacation Bible School.

Take note: none of this work is hypothetical. None of it is imaginary. All of it is specific, among real people with real names and real needs.   

So we are sent – chosent – to announce in word and deed that that God's dominion is right there, within our midst, not because of our good looks, not because of our expertise, but because the One who gathers us in grace is the One who always sends us out in love.

To this God, be all glory and honor, sovereignty and service, mystery and ministry, now and forever.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Just Say the Word

Luke 7:1-10

June 2, 2013

Ordinary 9

William G. Carter

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, ‘He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.’ 

And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ 

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’ When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

BC:      We have an occasional custom of asking a graduating senior to help with the sermon on this day. I had one in mind. I asked and she consented, so I would like to invite her forward at this time. And then, we sat down together to read the scripture text.

MC:     I wasn’t impressed. Who picks these passages, anyway?

BC:      Most of the time, it’s a committee …

MC:     Of course, it’s a committee. A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

BC:      Well, the texts are picked by an ecumenical committee.

MC:     Does that make it better?

BC:      To tell you the truth, neither of us thought much of the text. It’s the story of a rich Roman citizen who wants Jesus to do something for him.

MC:     It sounds like he wants to get his way because he is rich. A lot of rich people are used to getting their way.

BC:      And this guy is a centurion.

MC:     That’s a soldier, right?

BC:      It is the commander of a battalion of soldiers. A hundred soldiers are commanded by a centurion. He had great responsibility and significant authority. He was paid a lot better than the average soldier.

MC:     But it’s surprising to hear people say, “He is a nice guy.” Not the usual picture we have of a Roman centurion!

BC:      And it’s equally surprising that the people who say so are Jewish leaders. Israel maintained a racial boundary between themselves and the Romans. As the Jewish Mishnah said, “The dwelling places of Gentiles in Israel are unclean.”[1]

MC:     Still, these Jewish leaders were willing to go on behalf of that Roman centurion. There is something about him that they respected: he had concern for a slave, and he was highly regarded by the whole Jewish town of Capernaum.

BC:      And don’t overlook: not only was he rich, he was generous.

MC:     Did you see the article? J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, is no longer a billionaire. She gave away too much money to charity last year, mostly to charities for single mothers and their families. In fact, she gave $160 million dollars to charity. Now she is merely a millionaire.

BC:      I looked up the story in Forbes magazine after you told me about this. She said, “You have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.”[2] I think there should be a special place in heaven for people who are so generous.

MC:     Well, maybe this Roman centurion thought there should be a special place for him. He was very generous. The local Jewish leaders said he financed the building of their synagogue.

BC:      I have been to that synagogue. They have excavated the foundation stones in Capernaum . . .

MC:     Are we going to hear another Pastor Travel Story?

BC:      Oh no, no travel stories until September. J  But I did learn that Capernaum, way up north, had a track record for diverse people getting along. The town was along the trade route, along the ancient route from Babylon to Egypt. It would not have been unheard of for a Roman soldier to show kindness to Jewish townspeople.

MC:     This soldier was pretty remarkable. He was seriously concerned for one of his slaves. He valued him and didn’t want the servant to die. So he called on Jesus for health care. He’s a really good guy. The Jewish leaders that he sends to Jesus say as much. “He is worthy of having you do this for him,” they say. “He loves our people. He built our synagogue for us.”

BC:      As Luke tells this story, he puts it just right. The local people say about the Centurion, “he is worthy.” But he communicates to Jesus, he says, “I’m not worthy.”

MC:     Is he faking it? Is this false modesty?

BC:      We can’t say, and he’s not around to ask. And it does blow the stereotype of a Roman soldier out of the water. Those guys had a reputation for being brutes.

MC:     Well, he knows that he is not in charge of everything. He has authority over a hundred soldiers, but he cannot command an illness to flee his servant. So he hands over the matter to Jesus, and says, “Just speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”

BC:      Just speak the word . . . There are a lot of situations where we want him to speak the word. Every person who gets written down on our prayer cards is a person who needs a word of healing.

MC:     Every person who gets put down or pushed aside is a person who needs a word from Jesus.

BC:      The girl with the screaming headache, the woman with the spot on the Cat scan, the man with the confused mind, the parents still waiting for their kid to come home – at some time or another, all of us need a word from Jesus. Just speak the word, and we shall be healed.

MC:     There is so much in our lives that is out of control. We try not to let it show, but we hunger for somebody to be in control, for somebody to take charge, for somebody with authority to make us well.

BC:      So this tame little story that we originally didn’t like is really a much bigger story about prayer.

MC:     How so?

BC:      Prayer is the practice of handing over control. We ask the God that we meet in Jesus to speak the healing word, to do what we cannot do. We call on him from a distance, even relying on our friends if necessary to relay the message.

MC:     What strikes me is that both Jesus and the centurion “phone it in”. The centurion sends Jewish leaders to notify Jesus of the need. When he hears Jesus is coming to his house, he sends more friends to say, “Lord, don’t trouble yourself.” There is no evidence that he ever actually meets Jesus face-to-face.

BC:      Likewise, Jesus does not need to be in the man’s house to perform the healing. He doesn’t need to be physically present. He doesn’t need to take the slave by the hand and say, “Be well!”

MC:     The centurion seems to know this. Maybe that’s why he calls Jesus “Lord.” “Lord” means “master.” What’s the Greek word, O scholar father?

BC:      The word is “kurios”. It signifies “the one in charge.” It points to the One who has authority, the One who can make the decisions.

MC:     A Roman soldier is going to know about giving orders. This soldier orders the Jewish leaders to go see Jesus. Then he orders some friends to say, “Don’t trouble yourself.”

BC:      Sounds like he can’t make up his mind.

MC:     Actually I think he sounds humble. Appropriately humble. He wants Jesus to be Jesus: to be the Lord who has authority and power to heal.

BC:      So there is the message for all of us: to hand over to the Lord what we can’t handle, to trust that he will do what needs to be done.

MC:     Even if we are as powerful as a Centurion, we trust God’s power is greater than our own.

BC:      Even if we are as weak as his favorite servant, we can be healed by a Lord that we may never see.

MC:     Just say the word, Lord. Just say the word and we shall be healed.

BC:      Today, this is the Word of the Lord for us.

MC:     Thanks be to God.

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With thanks to Meg Carter, who wrote and delivered this sermon with me

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Jesus in Context, Bock and Herrick.

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/forbes-billionaire-list-rowling_n_1347176.html

Mystery and Mess

Acts 2:1-21

The Day of Pentecost

May 19, 2013

William G. Carter

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “What does this mean?” 

Despite all the pious things we think the Bible should say, the New Testament says the church’s first Pentecost was a noisy mess. Hurricane-force winds inside the church’s little hiding place. Tongues of fire descending on everybody’s heads. Everybody talking, shouting, at once. What an absolutely chaotic mess!

Hundreds of people were in town for the Jewish harvest festival, and they certainly thought so. They heard all the racket and thought the church had gotten drunk. “No, not yet,” shouted Simon Peter over the din. “It’s only the 9:00 service.”

By Luke’s suggestive description, at least sixteen languages were being spoken at once. It was not quiet, prayerful, or serene. Oh no! A bunch of church people were so full of God that they were mouthing off in every known language about Jesus, the man that God had raised from the dead. It was enough to gather a crowd and fill them with curiosity. They wanted to know: what does this mean?

I think we have to deal with the obvious. When people get filled up with God, it could be a noisy, chaotic racket. Anybody who thinks that faith is meant to be a quiet, well-ordered Sunday morning should hold on for dear life if God actually shows up. Because the Bible warns us there is nothing very settled about the work of the Holy Spirit.

There was a Sunday years ago, about this time of year. A bird was hiding in the sanctuary. Maud Thomas hit a chord on the organ, and the bird decided to fly around for a while. Just over our heads, on the constant move, nobody could catch it. Nobody could ignore it. It was a lot more interesting than my sermon, flying full speed from one end of the room to another. A couple of people stood and sang as if it nothing else was going on, but then the little bird swooped down toward them like a Kamikaze bombardier. The wife shrieked, the husband broke into laughter. I don’t know if the bird ever got out of here. You’d better watch out for it. As somebody said, “Was that the Holy Spirit?”

For all I know, it might have been. The mystery of God, the messiness of joy. Pentecost is this unmanageable moment. The fullness of God’s power comes. It reminds us how little control we actually have over anything. I’ve noticed the people who say frequently that “God is in control of everything” often say that because they don’t want anything to be out of control. This is Pentecost. We should know better.

I talked with a volunteer trumpeter on Friday night. Her name is Natalie and she is an attorney. She plays in a community band near Syracuse. I asked what that was like, and she said, “They play too many marches. The music is too predictable.”

She looked at me and said, “Are still keeping up with your jazz?” I replied, “It comes and goes.” Her mother leaned over to interrupt and ask, “When you play jazz, how do you know what it is happening next?” I said, “You don’t. You can’t control it, you can only stay open to whatever might happen.”

Natalie the attorney said rather wistfully, “Improvising looks like so much fun.” I said, “That’s why the songs go on so long.”

Then her mother said, “I can understand why people like having everything written down.”

Most of us can. We like to prepare for life’s events. My sister, the Lockheed executive, had her two pregnancies planned out. She wanted to get pregnant right on schedule, and she did. She calculated each pregnancy’s effect on her body, and that’s precisely what happened. Then she figured the precise time when each infant would appear – and her first-born daughter came right on time. Laura has been on time for everything ever since.

My nephew Matthew, however, was born five weeks early. We almost lost him. He was baptized in the neo-natal intensive care unit. My very organized sister was shaken by this, as we all were. During some of those long, terrible nights, if you had told her that Matthew would one day become a tall, strapping dude who works for Mansfield University and will be getting married this summer, she wouldn’t have been too sure. None of us would.

What happened? Life happened. Life in all its unpredictable power. Life as it comes through an invisible God whom we know as Spirit, as Holy Spirit.

Here’s a spiritual exercise you can try on your own. Survey some of the big moments of your life, especially those moments that seemed so disruptive. Ask a few questions: did you cause those moments to happen? Or did they just come? Could it be that God comes from time to time to stir things up? God is the Creator, after all. God has infinite imagination and infinite power. There’s no telling what God can do. God can come into a settled life and create a disruptive mess. Or God can come into the messiness of our lives and make something new. This is the truth of Pentecost.

It’s true of all of us. You may have a job interruption, an unexpected crisis, an unscheduled child – it is hard to parse out perfectly where the Spirit of God is and what the Spirit is doing. But if you have a bit of holy experience, you may perceive God is somehow right in the thick of it all. And what we thought was a messy disruption may actually be God’s way of giving us new life.

The early church, fifty days after the glad news of Resurrection, was still hiding out behind locked doors. The Risen Jesus had appeared to them, told them to stay in Jerusalem and pray – but pray for what? Then all of a sudden, the windows blew open. The great Wind came. None of those fishermen could manage it, prohibit it, or lock it out. The power of God loosened their tongues, gave them Easter talk to share -- and here’s the most important part: the Spirit pushed them outside to talk among the pilgrims who had come to the city for a Jewish harvest festival. None of those people that they themselves were the new crop God was planting.

It is Pentecost. The real God of the Bible does not stay hidden in a book. The Book says God stays busy in the world, birthing people into faith, giving them the power to love their neighbors, filling them with the words that declare Jesus Christ is at the center of it all. When God comes like that, as Spirit, as holy Wind, people are brought alive in Christ – and the music goes on a lot longer than anybody would have thought.

Now, I know we are Presbyterians. We don’t want anything to happen unless it is written down in a worship bulletin. But the God who brings Jesus alive – the God who blows through the window as Breath and Wind – this is the God who refuses to let any of us play dead.

I’m a pastor. I had to learn this the hard way. Once upon a time, for instance, I had a checklist of what I expected to happen in a wedding procession. Line up the bridesmaids, the ushers come down the side aisle. Everything is choreographed precisely. Mothers of the brides had always told me that was what they wanted. So we would rehearse a long while the night before, tune it up, get everything just right. I would ask, “Would you like to practice the processional one more time?”

But then, the next day, the time of the wedding would come and the bride wouldn’t be here yet. An usher would get a flat tire. The lights would flicker and a thunder clap announced a big storm arrived at show time. Just when the music would start, the bridesmaids would forget everything we had rehearsed and the ring bearer would stick a finger up his nose.

Over the years, I have learned to go with the flow and trust the Holy Spirit. I’m having a much better time.

Some years back, Will Willimon, a cranky Methodist, gave a graduation speech at Princeton Theological Seminary. He warned the future ministers about the messiness of ministry.  Not only do churches welcome people whose lives are unfinished and in perpetual transition, we have a God who shows no hesitation in disrupting our lives. This is how we know that Easter continues. This is how we know that, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has come down among us. It is not in the maintenance of settled and hushed religion, but in the lively activity of God among God’s people.

Willimon said, “So you and I can give thanks that the locus of Christian thinking appears to be shifting from North America and Northern Europe where people write rules and obey them, to places like Africa and Latin America, where people still know how to dance.”[1]

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] William Willimon, “The Messiness of Ministry,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, October 1993.

Beyond the Next-to-Last Word

Revelation 22:10-22

Easter 7 (C)

5/12/2013

William G. Carter

It’s been a while since I have read one, but I like to read a good mystery novel. Good mystery novels are a lot like other good books. They are filled with colorful characters, vivid scenes, snappy dialogue, and ingenious writing. But there's one thing you can always find in a mystery novel that you don't often find in most other books, and that is a good ending.

If you have ever read a mystery, you know what I mean. Within the first few chapters, something horrible always happens. Most of the time, it's a murder.  Someone discovers it. A detective is assigned to the case.  Some clues are discovered. The plot will twist and turn, revealing some new information. Nevertheless, when you get to the end, a mystery will reward you with a neat and tidy conclusion.

You wade through 287 pages in the book. Then you turn the last page, only to discover that the butler did it with a candlestick in the drawing room.

He was having an affair with Mrs. Englebert, who wanted access to her rich husband's life insurance policy. That's why her peculiar shade of lipstick was found on the butler's shoehorn, which, in turn, Had fallen out of his pocket while he was dusting the grand piano, which, in fact, had been discovered by the jealous Colonel Engelbert late last Wednesday, the very night of his unfortunate demise. While the colonel confronted his unfaithful wife in her drawing room, the butler crept out of her closet, tip-toed up to the Colonel, and bonked him on the head with the closest weapon at hand."

After reading through 287 pages, you finally discover "who done it.” That can be a very satisfying ending to a story. All the hidden actions are revealed. All the ugly motives are clear.   All the characters are seen for who they really are: the unfaithful spouse, the suspicious colonel, the impulsive butler. By the last page of a mystery novel, all the loose ends are tied together.       That's a good way to end a story, and it makes us feel better about ourselves.

It's worth wondering if that is how the Bible ends. A few minutes ago, we heard the last words of the last chapter of the last book in the Bible. We've just heard the ending of the Story.

Some of us remember how the Bible begins: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." On the first day, "Let there be light!" And there was light. On the second day, "Let there be evening and morning!" And it was so. On the third day, "Let there be sky, and let there be sea!" On it went, one day after another, until God crowned all creation by making a couple of people. When God made those people, it was a grand and glorious day! The mountains were singing. The stegosauruses were tap dancing. The turtles were leaping with joy.  Great day!

But only a few pages into the story, the plot thickens. What began so beautifully starts to sound like that old mystery novel. There's an unfaithful spouse (Eve), who takes a bite out of a forbidden fruit. There's a suspicious Colonel (Adam), who wonders if that apple will satisfy him, too. There's even an impulsive Butler (Cain), who acts out his frustration by bonking someone over the head.

How can it be?   When the story began in Genesis, it was so beautiful. Birds were singing.  Flowers were blooming. The sky was ablaze with light. But look what happens! Within the very first few pages, a garden is full of thorns and thistles and snakes that bite. And the Almighty wants to know, "Who done it?"

That's how the Story begins, the great Story of Creation. Given such an opening, we might wonder about the conclusion. How does it end?

Now, some listen to today's ending and say, "We know how it will turn out." The story will end with judgment. When all is said and done, people will be exposed for what they are. There is evidence of that kind of clarity in this text. The writer says, "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life, and may enter the city by the gates. But outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."

In other words, everything shall be revealed. John sees a wall separating the clean and the dirty,

the good and the evil, the saints and the ugly beasts. On the one hand, there will be martyrs in white robes, God's own people, always willing to suffer for what's right, yet unwilling to give into the demands of unrighteousness. On the other hand, well, you come up with your own list...

The writer of Revelation affirms a final judgment. To be sure, the idea of judgment makes a lot of people nervous. Garrison Keillor says it makes him nervous. It reminds him of all the voices that once frightened him as a teenager, voices that haunt him still.  

Keillor tells of vacationing on the Greek island of Patmos, the very island where the book of Revelation was written:

"A quarter-mile down the road is the cave where John dreamed about the end of the world...and told about the Lake of Everlasting Fire that so absorbed my entire youth.  A few miles farther is a sandy beach where young German and Swedish and French women lie in the sun, which would have absorbed me even more then than it does now, which is, considerably.  We ride to the beach, and then back up the mountain on green Honda scooters. My mother never let me own one or ride on one, feeling that any motorized two-wheeled vehicle was a ticket to flaming death... When we cruise down the mountain at 15 miles per hour, I hear (my mother's) voice say, `Be careful, Gary!  Not so fast!' When we putt-putt up from the naked beach past John's cave, I hear his voice say, `Woe!  Woe!  Woe!'"[1]  

When Keillor thinks of "judgment," he hears voices.  Maybe you do, too. Whether it's the lingering voice of an over-protective parent or the voice of some cranky preacher, there always seems to be somebody who will remind us that our passing thoughts are lustful, that we do not deserve the gifts of God's good creation, that, if we're not careful, our end will be one of destruction.

A lot of people think that's what judgment is about: "Straighten up, or you're going to hell." Or as the bumper sticker puts it, "Turn or burn."

Is that all there is to the end of the Story? If it were simply a matter of judgment, of good versus evil, of right against wrong, we could simply turn in our time cards and wait for the Verdict. But in the final words of the Revelation, judgment is really about the Voice of the Judge, who is Jesus Christ. "I am coming soon," he says, "and my reward is with me. I will repay according to everyone's work."

For our part, the Story of creation is not over. Not yet. And truth be told, our own situations are far from clear. What looks like good may be tainted with evil. What looks like right may actually be wrong. Everyday life is anything but the last page of a mystery novel.  Hidden actions are not yet revealed. Most human motives are mixed, at best. There are more loose ends than any one person can tie together.

In the end, we wait for something greater than a final judgment. We wait for a Judge who can see better than we can. We watch for an Advocate who sees through the illusions of this age.       We wait for a Savior who will know what we cannot know.

When maybe that’s why, when you get to the last words of the last book of the Bible, the predominant message is not something like, "I can't wait for the sinners to be sent to hell," because, in and of ourselves, we're all sinners. All of us are incomplete without the mercy and forgiveness of God.

So the last words of the story are not gloom, despair, and agony on me. The last ink on the last page is not, "Bring on the judgment! Bring on the fire and brimstone!  Purge this evil world!" Oh, no. They move on to a simple prayer: "Come, Lord Jesus" It has been the church's prayer from the beginning. "Come, Lord Jesus" We pray for him to come because we don’t always see so clearly.

Probably my most unusual seminary classmate was a guy named Jim McCloskey. At 37 years old, God shook him awake one day and Jim decided to do something different with his life. He left his high-paying job on the Philadelphia Main Line and enrolled in Princeton Seminary. He was the only classmate we had who drove a Lincoln Continental.

When Jim came to seminary, he didn't think he wanted to be a pastor. He took all the regular classes in Greek, Hebrew, theology, church history. But the moment of clarity came when he took a weekend job as a student chaplain in Trenton State Prison. As he met the prisoners on the row, they all told him they were innocent. Everybody in prison says they are innocent. Yet as Jim listened to their life stories, he began to wonder if some of them actually were innocent. So when he graduated, he started his own detective agency.

Knowing him is better than reading a mystery novel. Jim McCloskey was the real thing, an honest-to-goodness gumshoe. Every day of his life, Jim is committed to only one thing, namely,   working for the release of those who are innocent.

One Sunday night, I turned on 60 Minutes, and there was Jim McCloskey. He had been in the coal mining town of Grundy, Virginia, working on a case. A man named Roger Coleman had been arrested there for killing a neighbor. People didn’t like Roger before the arrest, and when members of the jury were selected, some of them said to the press, “We expect to put Coleman on the electric chair.” They were still allowed to serve on the jury.

The evidence seemed circumstantial. Police reports suggested he wasn't the assailant. Nevertheless the jury convicted him and sent him to death row. He got Jim McCloskey to take the case, but they ran out of time. Coleman maintained his innocence to the end, and Jim did what he could to take him seriously. It was fourteen years after Coleman’s death that DNA tests determined that he had been lying all along, that indeed he was guilty.

Do you see why we need Jesus? Because he sees everything clearly. He comes in the clarity of judgment. He sees the truth about all of us. And he comes, not only with complete truth, but with generous grace. That is what everybody needs most of all. Everybody.

And that’s how the Bible concludes, you know. Not only with the prayer, "Come, Lord Jesus," but with the final blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints." When all is said and done, the One who is coming is the One whom we already know. The One who provides for us each day shall be the One everybody shall see.

So we need never fear. Not if we love Jesus, not if we know him, not if we trust him. This is the Jesus who said of his own murderers, “Father, forgive them.” This is one who invites even the saints to “wash their robes in the Blood of the Lamb.” He is the One and only One who has the last word on all of human life.

And his last word goes like this: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Garrison Keillor, “Patmos,” in We Are Still Married, p. 239.

No Churches in the New City

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

Easter 6

May 5, 2013

William G. Carter

And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God . . . I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 

We continue on our Easter journey through the book of Revelation, and are drawing closer to the end. Our guide is the prophet John, who has a series of visions on the little, rocky island of Patmos. It is the Lord’s Day, the day of worship. If he had been worshiping with his congregation in the great city of Ephesus, they would be gathering to sing the hymns and offer the prayers, patterned after the Jewish synagogue of gathering, hearing God’s Words, responding, and departing in joy. John recalls all of this until heaven interrupts.

Visions come. John sees the great conflict between good and evil, not as a once-and-done battle, but as a cycle of maneuvers and responses. He does not avoid the painfulness of life as we know it, where famine happens somewhere in the world, where brutality all too frequently breaks out. But he sees also the splendor of God’s throne in the center of all things. The door to heaven has opened, the truth is fully known, and there is One seated upon the throne.

As we move toward the end of the book, we begin to see the destination of where all life is heading, at least the life that remains with God. God triumphs over evil, even if we cannot see totally how God sifts everything out.

Then John looks, and he sees a city fall out of the sky. It is the New Jerusalem. It’s not the Old Jerusalem. It resembles it, but it is infinitely new, polished and gleaming. It is far more glorious than any city on earth. No garbage blowing down the street, no dark alleys, no homeless poor looking for hope. John goes to great lengths to describe this city full of precious jewels, some so precious that the words don’t translate well from Greek into English.

The prophet strains to describe what he sees in his vision. It is an extraordinary vision. As John sees this, takes it all in, as he sees the shining city coming down from heaven, the New Jerusalem, he discovers there is no temple in the heart of the city. How curious! For Jerusalem was always defined by its temple. Surely John would know that, particularly given how much of the Jewish scripture he quotes as he describes his visions. Revelation is full of lines from the Psalms and the prophets, all woven into a fresh tapestry of praise. The praises of God spoken through the centuries are revisited and claimed, the same praises that Israel sang in its temple. But there is no temple to generate the music, no temple to employ the priesthood, no temple to officiate over sacrifices that might bring people closer to God. There is no temple as the meeting place of God and humanity. No temple at all.

This may seem a curious omission. It will take imaginative energy for some of us church folk to chew on this and digest it. Ever since our birth, and a good time before it, churches have their structures. Congregations have their buildings. The buildings require care and attention. They become the means by which people gather, whether in simplicity as in this Calvinistic meeting house or in high cathedrals filled with art, incense, and precious metals.

“We must have a temple,” isn’t that right? That has long been the mantra for the Presbyterian establishment. As our forebears proliferated across the continent, moving slowly as Presbyterians usually do, they established a temple of sorts in every town they could. Some of these temples are quite impressive. Think of some of the great congregations you have known. They have enormous buildings. I love every time I go to 55^th and 5^th in New York, and wander into Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, right across the street from Donald Trump’s tower. I love the smell and feel of the wooden pews, or the high lofty pulpit which stands ten steps above reproach. It all reeks of permanence and presence. Songs from the saints have circled toward the ceiling like incense.

But there will be no such structure in the New Jerusalem. No temple at all. May I say that is a bit strange, particularly in situations that a lot of churches are in? The congregation has dwindled to a precious few, but at least they have their building. They will hang on as long as they can as long as they have that patch of real estate. Go up and down Main Avenue in Scranton, there are lots and lots of temples, in some neighborhoods one on every corner. Each temple grounds them, situates them, declares they are somewhere, and the mission field is right there, all around them. But we can also guess what it takes to keep those structures going. It’s an enormous amount of work, and then there are the utility bills.

It used to be that Presbyterian churches had a separate group of trustees. They governed alongside the elders. If the elders focused on heaven and its riches, the trustees tended to earth and its liabilities: patching the roof, replacing the boiler, re-striping the parking lot. Over the years, as elders and trustees consolidated in many congregations, the church building and its needs have continued to demand attention and resources.

I recall the day that I first saw this building. The walls needed a coat of paint, the sanctuary floor had harvest gold carpeting nearly thirty years old. We had a building and grounds committee back then. It was one guy, and he had stopped coming to church, because every time he came, somebody hit him with some complaints. We had a sexton, a wonderful man, except that he couldn’t see well enough to drive a car and his cardiologist had told to stay off ladders. And we had a junk room back in the corner where Room 210 is now located. It was filled chest-high with old curriculum, broken lampshades, filmstrips that we had stopped using (anybody remember filmstrips?). When the day came when the dumpster was brought in to clear out the junk room, one of the people responsible for Christian Education was caught climbing into the dumpster to pull things out.

I’m talking about a temple. A temple takes a lot of effort, requires a lot of money. One of our neighboring congregations, smaller than this one, is spending five hundred thousand dollars on its building and another five hundred thousand dollars on its pipe organ. They tell me it is going to be really, really impressive. Maybe that will help to bring people in. Who can say?

But there is no temple in God’s future. Isn’t that an unusual declaration? The Building and Grounds committee would say, “Hallelujah! We don’t have to have any more meetings!” The funding people would say, “Hooray! We don’t have to raise any more money for the temple.”

So what is John saying to us? What is he pointing to? Those of you who are racing ahead in your minds know exactly what he can see. There will be no more temple because a temple is the meeting ground between people and God, and God’s presence is mediated to the people. The temple is where people congregate, where they gather together to worship and learn, where they embody Christian faith as a communal faith. Yet when all is said and done, when God comes close to God’s own people, there will be no need for a temple. God in Christ is that temple.

In his earthly ministry, Jesus said as much. In the Gospel of John, he points to himself and says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Christian people hear him say “three days,” and they know he is speaking about the temple of his body. But when he said it, he had just gone into the Old Jerusalem temple, turned over the tables of the money-changers and swept out the merchants. All the religious enterprises and rummage sales are not the reasons we come to church any way. We come to church to encounter the Living God. Church is what points us to God. Temple is what points us to God. And if it does not point us to God, it is taking up valuable real estate.

John sees a day when there is no temple. He does not say that to declare the temple is unimportant; oh no, we would not know about God without it! But he does see the day coming when God and people will be in complete peace and harmony with one another. And it will come, not because the people have worked at it, but because God will step over everything that separates his people from himself.

Now perhaps there are some people who are so ready for this day to come that they have stopped coming to church, especially when the weather is nice. “I don’t need to worship God indoors; I can worship God by the trout stream or on the fourteenth fairway or in the park.” Fair enough; and churches can spend far too much time inside when there is a beautiful world to enjoy and a hurting world to serve.

But John points us beyond all this, when there is no intermediary between heaven and earth. In God’s future, there is no Bible for God’s will is completely revealed; the Bible we have points us to that future. In God’s future, there are no more mission projects, because all of God’s work will be accomplished. There will be no more church structures, whether buildings or organizations or budgets or worship bulletins, for they won’t be necessary any more. They will be revealed for what they always were: provisional demonstrations of God’s Kingdom, signs of what will really truly come.

Imagine a church-less temple or a temple-less church. In the meantime, there are some experiments here and there. Our national Presbyterian family is trying to ignite a 1001 new worshiping communities, communities of people who gather around Jesus Christ as it once was, before it was structure, building, and big business. They bring people together to worship and learn in the invisible presence of God. One of my favorites is a small creative community in Pittsburgh. It began in a tattoo parlor, where people who are heavily pierced come to hear about the One who was pierced on the cross for them.

I don’t know how I fit in, with my button-down shirt and suit jacket, in the midst of all that ink. But they believe God is real, right there with them in the grit of daily life. And after the worship songs die down, they welcome everybody to a taco bar in the back of the room.

Imagine a congregation that is not bound by walls, a group of Christian people who gather for Someone greater than bricks and mortar. For them, the cornerstone is not 1912, but Jesus Christ, alive again since 33 A.D. We live in the promise that we will see him face-to-face, just as we come around his table this day. God will be completely with us, and we will be completely with God. And every faithful act we do here and now is a rehearsal of what is to come.

Some time back, our church had a deacon named Mark. He was a faithful man, going every couple of weeks to visit an older woman named Elsie. She had outlived her family, so Mark became her family. She could not get out of her home, so Mark took her whatever she needed. She could not get out to church, so Mark took church to her.

One day he phoned and said, “It’s time for Elsie to have communion. Her health has been a little shaky, and I think we need to go.” We put a date on the calendar. The day came, we met in the parking lot and drove over to the facility where she now lived. When we arrived, however, we were met at the door by someone who told us Elsie had just died. It was completely unexpected. I’m standing there at a loss for words, the tray of bread and grape juice in my hands. I was in shock. About all I could stammer out in my awkwardness was, “But we have come to give her communion.”

Mark turned with a smile and said, “Bill, it’s OK. Right now she is tasting the Real Thing.”

© William G. Carter. All rights reserved.