A tribute to my father, on the day we affirm Christ's resurrection

In loving memory of Glenn Carter

July 18, 2015

On behalf of our family, thank you for coming. Your companionship in our sorrow gives great comfort. Grief is always personal work, but none of us should ever grieve in isolation. We appreciate your support more than you can ever know.

I stand in praise of the tallest man in my world. When I was a little kid, I measured my growth by the next button on his dress shirt. When I surpassed him in altitude, I still kept looking up to my dad. His life has been a witness to the extraordinary grace of God, a grace that invites us to stretch to our fullest potential, while always extending our arms to serve those around us.

Glenn Carter was the fifth of nine children given to Margaret and Norris. We are grateful for the siblings, nephews, and nieces who can be with us today. Since Dad was the kid in the middle, he had to learn how to distinguish himself. His parents lived modestly in a farmhouse in Dempseytown, Pennsylvania. They didn't have much, especially in the Great Depression when dad was born. Brothers shared the same beds. Dinners and clothes were homemade. College seemed impossible. But through a combination of hard work and gracious breaks, my father lived a remarkable life.

He entered the US Navy after graduating high school, which greatly enlarged his world. Returning to marry his prom date, he and Betsy bought a trailer and moved to northeastern Indiana. That was where Dad enrolled in a small engineering college that specialized in educating returning vets. Dad aced the entrance exams and did very well in school while working full time. He was elected president of his senior class, in the same year I was born.

After a short stint for a company in Akron, Ohio, he landed a job with IBM in 1962. Owego has been his home ever since. He always kept his small town roots and community commitments, although his world was never small.

Dad’s work at IBM was brilliant and impressive. He was a smart manager, a tough negotiator, and largely responsible for winning contracts that brought hundreds of jobs to this county. Much of his work was highly classified, and my siblings and I rarely knew why he flew to Wichita, Seattle, and a few undisclosed locations. Once in a while, an unclassified story would leak from his lips. He told us how he met Presidents Reagan and Bush, and once traded conversational bullets with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

At age 52, when IBM wanted to lower the average age of its employees, Dad stunned a lot of people by taking an early retirement. He said he had enough of the corporate life. With that, he tried his hand at consulting and did very well. He split three years between Owego and Washington DC, but the time came when he was done with working on the road.

So that is when he began his third career: economic development for Tioga County. "It is time to give something back to my community," he told me. "I have a closet full of suits and I know how to talk with companies about jobs. I will do this until my current neckties go out of style." Well, this is Owego. You can wear the same necktie forever. Dad gave many years of his life to enhancing the employment of the community where he lived.

Dad was intellectually restless. He was enormously curious about the world. He never thought in small or limited terms. Privately he confessed he had little time for fools, but he had the rare ability to make the smallest person feel like a giant. When you were around him, you always wanted to be a better person.

Once he called me from a phone booth to say he was coming through my town. "Let's have coffee." After playing me along, he revealed he was returning from Manhattan from a meeting with Governor Mario Cuomo. Then he showed me an enormous check in his breast pocket. "Want to touch it?" he asked. "But you can't hold onto it. It belongs to the people of Tioga."

This man from modest circumstances became a mentor for many. My classmates who considered careers in engineering were invited to stop by and chat.  He was our scoutmaster for Boy Scout Troop 38, and it was his encouragement that pushed me to become an Eagle Scout. The scouting council honored him for decades of leadership by bestowing on him the rare Silver Beaver award. Likewise he enjoyed his longtime membership in the Rotary Club of Owego, believing strongly in its motto of Service Above Self.

A childhood Methodist, Dad became a venerable Presbyterian through marriage. He served repeated terms as a ruling elder in his congregation, and was totally incapable of sitting on his hands or being quiet when leadership was needed. He was elected moderator of the Presbytery of Susquehanna Valley and served with great distinction. Leadership was his lifetime vocation, and he believed his leadership should benefit as many people as possible.

He believed the highest good is the public good. One time we went together to a church conference on faith and economics. Sitting in a small group for discussion, he barked, “There is too much greed in this country. Don’t the robber barons realize we rise and fall together?” He looked at me and asked, “Do you ever tell your people something like that in your sermons?”

Yet he knew how to focus on the people right in front of him. His love and devotion for Mom built an extraordinary 58-year partnership. My brother and sisters and I experienced his love as a certainty in our lives. And he adored his grandchildren, reading Dr. Seuss stories, taking them for rides on a larger-than-necessary lawn tractor, toasting s’mores and drinking root beer floats.

There are a lot of memories: I recall vacations in the paneled station wagon, the constant stops to read every historical marker along the highway, and the endless leveling of the pop-up camper (don’t ever go camping with an engineer!). He took us along when he went spotlighting deer. For all of his office intensity, Dad loved to get outdoors. You can take the man out of Dempseytown, but you can’t take the Dempseytown out of the man.

It would never occur to Dad to spend money on a Caribbean cruise. IBM had rewarded him with many trips, but he and Mom chose to putter around a family cottage near where he raised. It kept him in touch with his family and his roots. The cottage became a temporary hunting camp for his brothers and his nephews, but it was also a playground, first for his four children, and then his grandchildren, who enjoyed a number of Cousin Camps where their parents were not allowed to attend.

I remember a father who was emotionally present for every baseball game and school concert, even if he was traveling for work. If he went to Seattle to consult with Boeing, he might bring back a goose down sleeping bag from REI for one of his sons. If he had to work long hours, he still took each of his daughters out to swanky restaurants for birthday dates.  

In later years, Dad was my traveling companion. We walked the footsteps of Jesus in Israel, and then the footsteps of the apostle Paul in Greece and Turkey. In fact, we almost lost him one day in Palestinian territory when he pointed a camera at an Israeli soldier who pointed an Uzi at him. Dad decided to take his seat on the tour bus and later admitted, “Well, that made me feel alive.” He lived the words of St. Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a person fully alive.”

It is indeed Glenn’s faith, lived in the real world and nurtured in this sanctuary, which prompts us to praise God for the gift of Dad's life and to celebrate his home-going. He heard the Gospel preached here and he believed it. He knew in his bones that the deep grace of Jesus covers our brokenness, and all of us are held in a greater love than we can imagine. My greatest faith memory was sitting in a pew on the center aisle, with Dad singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy" in a morning voice so low that it could crack concrete. Glenn Carter believed the hymns he sang, and it made all the difference in his life.

We offer him to God today. We thank God for the gift of his life. We praise God for how God carried him and commissioned him to be a servant.  Years ago, a heart valve replacement first reminded Dad of his vulnerability; his response was to keep giving his heart away for the benefit of others.

God is so good. When illness made Dad forgetful, God remembered him – and God proved it by surrounding our father with people who loved him. At the center was our devoted Mom who never left his side; David has been the brilliant problem-solver; Mary has been the hands and heart of Jesus; and daughter Debbie will always be the one who most resembles our father. Even when Dad faced weakness, as all of us shall, he claimed the grace and dignity that comes from knowing he was a child of God. Maybe that is his final lesson for all of us.

Thank you for loving our Dad. It is now that we give Glenn Carter back to the God who loves him even more than we do. With deep gratitude, we commend this very tall man to the eternal joy of Jesus Christ, our savior.

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

Keeping the Preacher Locked Up

Mark 6:14-29

July 12, 2015

William G. Carter

"When Herod heard John the Baptist, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him."

From time to time, our worship committee talks about ways to bring the scripture alive. We want people to engage with the scripture passages, and on occasion, we have even acted them out. But tell me: how would this Bible passage do as a chancel drama? What do you think?

Today’s text alternates between the dungeon and the banquet hall. It tells of an enticing dancer and an obedient executioner. There is a nasty king, with a terrible reputation for partying too much. There is an evil queen, possessed by jealousy and retribution. And in the center of it all, there is a preacher, a preacher that they have kept locked up.  

For some people, it’s a good idea to keep the preacher locked up.  Many preachers find it awkward to attend a king’s birthday party. Preachers often don’t do well around kings. They don’t own a tuxedo. They don’t know when to use the proper salad fork at state dinners. They are unaccustomed to spending time with the wealthy and the manipulative. And when the party cranks up, most preachers cannot dance.

It’s good to keep the preacher locked up, especially if his name is John the Baptist. He doesn’t do well in social circumstances. When people draw near to him, he yells at them and calls them names. John may take a lot of baths, but he still smells pretty bad. There are locust legs stuck between his teeth. See the fire in his eyes. Just as you and I excuse him from our Christmas preparations, the king thinks it is a good idea to keep him locked up and out of sight.

Originally it was his wife’s idea, his most recent wife. That was a story right out of the tabloids. According to one version of the story, King Herod Agrippa went to visit his half-brother Philip on the way to Rome. His eye fell up on Philip’s wife Herodias, so he decided to get rid of his own wife. Herodias decided to dump her husband. It was a scandal, but kings tend to do whatever they want. Herod Agrippa and Herodias got married, ignoring the fact she was his half-brother’s wife and also his niece. It was a twisted tale.

And John the Baptist began to yell. He stepped out of the Jordan River and started yelling at the palace. That desert preacher normally raised his voice at the scorpions and the sand lizards, but now he started yelling at the king. The king could hear the criticism. He still had a memory of Jewish faith somewhere in his family background. He was the kind of king who might import a rabbi for an occasional worship service, rather than trek into Jerusalem and go to the temple like the common people. Security concerns, you know.

So when John’s yelling got into one ear, and his wife saying “You’ve got to shut that guy up” in the other ear, King Herod send soldiers to bring in John and toss him into the dungeon. Sometimes it is best to keep the preacher locked up, especially if you are the king.

But that is when the story gets a little weird. Herod put John in the castle dungeon and he protected him. He knew John was “a righteous and holy man.” All the time, John kept preaching. What did he say? Well, we know how his favorite sermon goes: “Repent!” That is, “Come home to God.” But I am going to guess that John was also preaching a sermon on Leviticus 18, a passage where God says, “It is wrong to marry your brother’s wife” (18:6), especially if he’s still alive.

You could keep the preacher locked up, but you couldn’t shut his mouth – especially if he was speaking for God.

I think of the closing scene of a movie from a few years back called “The Apostle,” featuring Robert Duvall as a Pentecostal preacher. He is a wild man and does some wild things. He ends up in jail, right where he belongs. At the end of the film, as the closing credits roll, he is out with the chain gang of other prisoners. Under the watchful eye of prison guards, he is still preaching the Gospel. There is no shutting him down.

The apostle Paul had his own run-ins with the law. According to the New Testament, he was often in prison. He wrote to the Christians in Philippi (1:12) and said, “I want you to know that what happened to me has advanced the Gospel.” All the guards and prisoners knew he was there for the sake of Jesus. Nobody could keep him quiet when it came to the Gospel.

And Jesus himself – Jesus was a prisoner. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is arrested and taken before the religious authorities. They ask him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” He stares them down and says, “Yahweh – I am! And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power” (14:62). They wanted him to be quiet, but he would not be quiet … even if they had him locked up.

This is an amazing story, you know. It keeps happening. The Catholic parish next door had a priest some years ago who has taken on mythical significance to the local clergy. It seems he received a lot of invitations for high school graduation parties. With this being the Abingtons, a lot of those parties served a great deal of alcohol, since alcohol is the drug of choice in our town. It troubled the priest, particularly since the parents were absent or hobnobbing out by the pool, while the teens were getting loaded.

So he stood one Sunday in June and addressed his congregation. “I love our kids,” he began, “but I have to say how troubled I am by the amount of drinking at these parties. Not only is it illegal, it’s completely out of hand. So if I am invited to a graduation party and alcohol is freely served to kids, I will leave. I cannot be part of that. I won’t make a spectacle of my departure, not is it my role to call the police, but I will leave.”

That year, the number of his invitations dropped from seventy-five to two. Nobody attended those two parties. He received outraged phone calls and anonymous hate mail, all asking, “Who do you think you are?” He said, “I think I am a minister of God’s Gospel,” he said.            

So John the Baptist kept preaching, even the king had him locked up, even when the queen carried a grudge against him. John answered to a Higher Authority. He would not be silenced about the truth of God even if he suffered for it. And in the detail of the story that is both most curious and revealing, “Herod liked to listen to John preach.” Just imagine him creeping down the back stairwell, staying just out of sight, with John railing away against his sins and excesses. There was a power in the Word that John spoke. It appealed to something in the king’s soul.

What was it? A reminder that God is the true ruler over all the world’s rules? Was it what one theologian once called “a faint recollection of the Garden of Eden” – and he could remember when all the world was in communion with God? Could it be a dim memory of right and wrong, an innate sense of moral law, or a twinge of guilt that he had done something wrong, that he had done a lot of things that were wrong? The storyteller doesn’t specify, but I can believe him. “King Herod liked to hear John preach.” When people hear the Gospel of God, even for the first time, they can hear it for what it is.

Even Herodias, Herod’s new wife, could identify it - - and she had the freedom to decide that it wasn’t for her. If she took the preacher seriously, she could lose that nice place in the palace. She could lose the velvet curtains and the cushioned chairs. She could lose the protected distance between her and all the people in the kingdom who knew what she had done. She and her daughter could be thrown out of the palace and into the Dead Sea.

So she knows what she wants to do. When Herod and the boys are losing their minds at the big birthday bash that he threw for himself, she decides it’s time for John to lose his head. Her daughter dances for the crowd, and is offered whatever she wants by her stepfather. Asking her mother what that might be, Herodias decides to silence the preacher. She could have had half of Herod’s kingdom. Instead she chooses to silence the preacher.

But once again, there is another unusual detail to this story, and it’s the detail that prompts the telling of this whole story. King Herod has heard about Jesus, and how he, too, is preaching – and how Jesus is sending his followers out to preach. Everybody is trying to figure out who this Jesus is. Herod says, “It is John, whom I beheaded. John is raised from the dead.” That is an ironic statement for all kinds of reasons, especially for those of us who live after Easter. And it is a recognition that the same powers at work in John are also at work in Jesus.

What are these powers? They are the powers of God’s speech, the powers of God’s truthful declaration of life and how life is intended to be. “The voice of the Lord is powerful,” says the Psalmist (29:4). “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” And should God speak, there is no shutting down of the voice. Maybe like Herodias somebody may choose to rid ourselves of the messenger. Perhaps like Herod the listener does not have the depth of character to understand what is being said. But God is a God who speaks.

God says, “Let there be a planet Earth,” and it is so. God says, “Let my Word take flesh," and Jesus is born. And when that Word Incarnate is arrested, condemned, and pushed out of the world, God says, “Let the New Creation be born," and Jesus Christ is raised from the dead.

So there may be no more important work for us than to listen to what God might be saying. When Sunday rolls around, and the scriptures are opened in public, we listen for the Voice which Herod, Herodias, and Pontius Pilate could not silence. It is the Voice that gives life, the Voice that sets us free from the powers of human destruction, the Voice that purifies and redeems what God loves.

Throughout the ages, God’s Voice has been recorded in the scriptures, but God’s Voice is bigger than the scriptures. When one of God’s servants says, “Slaves, obey your masters,” it was an appropriate Word for that time and situation, but it must be held in tension to another time when God said to the slave masters, “Let my people go.”  For God is greater than whatever our holiest human words can ever capture. Greater than the words on the page is the one true God, God of Gods, light of light. The Words of scripture are recorded in order that they will point beyond themselves to the God who is creating, judging, and redeeming life.

Through the dimness and bleary eyes, King Herod could sense this Power. Through a deep grudge and desire for revenge, Queen Herodias thought she could silence this Power. What both of them missed is God still speaks and calls all of his children into a holy and life-giving fellowship with the very Power that gives us birth.

Nothing is going to shut down that Voice – not an embarrassed King, not a mean-hearted Queen, not a dungeon, not even a crucifixion.

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

The Sermons Nobody Wants to Hear

Mark 6:1-6

July 5, 2015

William G. Carter

Jesus left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

I don’t know what Jesus expected. He went back to his hometown and began to preach, and they tuned him out. Of course they did. What did he expect?

Up until now, he has been spending a lot of time on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, on the boundary between Jews and Gentiles. The village of Capernaum has been his home base as he goes about his work. Jesus teaches in the synagogues and preaches to the open-air crowds. He throws out the demons and gives bread to the multitudes. He is a busy guy.

Back and forth, he goes across the sea. He touches down in a Gentile graveyard and straightens out a crazy man while getting rid of a lot of unclean pigs. Then he gets back in the boat and lands in Capernaum. A bleeding woman is healed and a little girl is raised from the dead. Jesus is making a name for himself. Everywhere he goes, life is restored, faith is nourished, hope comes alive.

… everywhere except his home town. They know you in your home town. They remember you.

Whenever I visit my hometown church in upstate New York, I am disqualified before I even open my mouth. Everybody remembers the kid who became a preacher. There’s the lady who had a spat with my mother at the last Women’s Association dinner. There’s the retired usher who was there when I made a paper airplane out of a worship bulletin and accidentally threw it out of the balcony. There’s the Sunday School teacher who still can’t figure out what God did to my heart.

Just last Sunday, I went to a graduation party for a classmate’s kid, and there was my pretty prom date. We sat at a picnic table and talked, and then she said in a low voice, “I still can’t believe you are a minister.” Familiarity breeds dismissal. They know you; therefore they don’t have to listen to you.

If you are a preacher, you don’t even have to go home to experience that phenomenon. Just stay in the same church for twenty-five years. Somebody will say, “Sorry I’m going to miss the next forty-nine Sundays, but I know you will be here whenever I drift back.” Familiarity. Same old, some old.

When Will Willimon was the chaplain at Duke University Chapel, he says the phone rang at lunchtime one day. Nobody else was around, so he answered it. A voice said, “Who is preaching this week?” Will cleared this throat and said, “The Rev. Dr. William H. Willimon, dean of the chapel.”

The woman said, “Is that the short, fat man with the high squeaky voice?” No, he said, that’s the other guy. Nothing special. Same old thing. He’s here every week, so you don’t have to come.

Jesus goes home to the hilltop city of Nazareth. His family is still living in that town. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his custom. He opens the scroll and begins to speak. The crowd murmurs, “Ah, Jesus. We know Jesus. We know his four younger brothers. His sisters are sitting up in the balcony with their mom.” He’s the same woodcutter’s kid who left here a few years ago. Sure, he’s done a lot of things. He has made a name for himself. We have low expectations. Nothing good ever comes from Nazareth. Isn’t that what they say?

… Except that this time, he’s pretty good.  No, actually he’s better than that, he’s really good. And he doesn’t use footnotes like the rabbi. He tells it straight. There is an uncommon depth to his message. He’s not stealing little rinky-dinky stories out of Reader’s Digest. He certainly isn’t telling any jokes. No, there is substance and significance to his instruction. His words are drenched in insight.

Pretty soon, they are saying, “Isn’t this Jesus, the neighbor kid who grew up down the street? What is this wisdom given to him from heaven? Where did he get all of this?”

And because of that, they really took offense at him. The reason for the refusal was once described by my preaching professor Fred Craddock. Fred said, “There are two kinds of sermons that nobody was to hear: bad sermons and good sermons.”

What he means by that is, within each of us, there is the desire to push God away. To keep God at arm’s length … or further. We know what God wants to say to us, but we don’t want to hear it. We have a deep hunger that can be satisfied only by the healing love and abundant mercy of God, but we are really not sure we are ready for it. And we will come up with any reason to keep God away and disqualify all God’s messengers. It is the human predicament.

A man I knew was listening to a graduate student pour out his broken heart. The tough story was told in tears and confession. He had gotten to the end of his tale of woe, and the older man said, “Tony, I hold all this weight that you have unburdened. Why don’t we pray? Let’s give it to God.” Tony nodded, they both bowed their heads. My friend put his hands on Tony’s shoulders and began to pray. Suddenly Tony sprang up and said, “I’m not ready for this yet,” and ran away.

Imagine if that was Jesus, and not merely one of his messengers. Imagine if he came to you, spoke with you, asked you, “What is the deepest desire of your heart?” And he invited you to this communion table and said, “I’m going to break my own body and put it in your hands. I’m offering you the cup so you can take my life into your life.” Would you do it? Or would you push him away?

In this brief story, Mark repeats what other New Testament writers have said about God’s mission in Jesus Christ. The gospel of John says it most directly: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (1:11). John doesn’t specify if he means the hometown congregation in Nazareth or the church full of Gentiles in his own time.

There is no need to specify, for there is something profoundly within us that pushes away the presence and power of God. We can gather any Sunday to draw near to the very thing that could heal us and fill us with peace and holiness, but in every person there is the all-too-human tendency to skip out and go for brunch, or go for a boat ride, or do anything we possibly can to avoid the presence and power that can make us well.

Mark says, “Jesus couldn’t do any deeds of power in Nazareth.” It wasn’t merely because he was the home town boy back for a visit. It wasn’t merely because he stunned them by speaking with the clarity and precision of grace. He couldn’t do any deeds of power because they were humanly anxious about him getting too close. And they didn’t have the courage to trust him, to listen to him, because that would mean they would be changed.

Anybody here want to be changed? Or are you content to stay the way you are? That’s a good question to ask of synagogue dwellers like the likes of us. We show up at the same time every week. We sit in the same pews, we talk to the same people. We like to sing the same songs and grumble if one of them is new. We expect to have our opinions confirmed and our habits reinforced. We hear the same old preacher, say the same greeting at the back door. Faith goes on autopilot. Hearts are slowly coated with Teflon, ready to deflect any act of God.

But what if it happened? What if Jesus got through to any of us? What if we were awakened or interrupted? What if we were shaken or disrupted? What if the living word of Christ cracked through our defenses, and we suddenly perceived the immensity of God’s grace? Could we stay the way we are – or would God do something astounding within us, among us, and beyond us?

Tell me: does God-in-Christ have the power to change us – or are we going to squelch it? I guess it depends on what we do with what we hear.

Did you hear what happened in Charleston, South Carolina, after Dylann Roof shot up the A.M.E. church and killed nine people? After he was arrested and arraigned on charges, the authorities brought him before the families of the victims. They were invited to say whatever they wanted to say.

The daughter of Ethel Lance looked him in the eye and said, “I just want everybody to know I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never be able to hold her again but I forgive you. You hurt me, you hurt a lot of people, but God forgive(s) you, and I forgive you.”

The husband of Myra Thompson spoke. “I forgive you, and my family forgives you, but we would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Give your life to the one who matters the most, Christ, so he can change it.”

The granddaughter of the Rev. Daniel Simmons said, “Although my grandfather died at the hands of hate, this is proof … that hate won’t win.” Hate won’t win.

The sister of the Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor said, “I’m very angry… but one thing my sister taught me is that we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate so we have to forgive. I pray God on your soul… May God bless you.”[1]

It was astounding. The world was stunned. Where these people get all of this?

They must have been listening to Jesus.

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

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[1] “Charleston Church Shootings: What victims of church shooting said to Dylann Roof,” 19 June 2015,  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33185848

Don't Worry, He Will Get to You

Mark 5:21-43

Ordinary Time 13

June 28, 2015

William G. Carter

Her health care plan was not working. The woman had been sick for a very long time. So long, in fact, she didn't know what to do. She didn't know where to turn. Everybody suggested a different remedy, but none of them would work. She visited many physicians, but none of them could help. She stayed sick. As time passed, her health grew worse. All those medical bills were bleeding her dry.

So when she heard Jesus was coming to town, she pushed her way through the crowd. She'd heard about him, of course. The last time he worked on this side of the sea, "he had cured many," says Mark. "All who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him."

Now she believed it was her turn to get well. She pushed through the multitude, saying, "I don't need to talk to him. I don't need to bother him. I don't need to slow him down with a lot of bedside chatter. All I need to do is touch the edge of his garment, and then I will be made well." As we have heard, that is precisely what happened.

Well, mostly. Because, as we have also heard, two things went wrong. First, no sooner did she touch his clothes when Jesus spun around and said, "Who touched me?" Apparently he did not want anybody to get healed anonymously, much less this anonymous woman. "Who touched me?" Jesus said. He stood there, looking for her, scanning the crowd. He looked at every face: some of them eager, some curious, some confused. He kept looking until he spotted her. And her anonymous touch became a conversation face-to-face.

She told him what she'd done. He said, "Daughter, faith has made you well. Go in peace. Be healed of your disease." It was a big moment for her. There she was, sick, desperate, and anonymous. And Jesus healed her, blessed her with his peace, and gave her the name "daughter." 

What I want you to notice is Jesus took the time to do all of this. For twelve years, the scriptures had diagnosed her hemorrhage and called her "unclean." But Jesus took the time to heal her, restore her to full status in the community, to risk touching a ritually unclean woman and making himself unclean – all for the sake of making her well. For twelve years, she shuffled through her days without dignity. On the day she touched Jesus, he turned and restored her as a human being.

I want you to notice he took the time to do that; because I also want you to notice that, because he took time for that woman, he ran out of time to help somebody else. He was late for a previous appointment. That's the second thing that went wrong. While Jesus was busy healing the woman who had been sick for twelve years, a sick twelve-year-old girl died.

Fortunately this sort of thing doesn't happen much in the gospel of Mark. Jesus got interrupted from a healing by a healing. Jairus begged, "Please heal my daughter." He intended to make the young girl well by a touch and a word. On the way, however, Jesus got interrupted by a sick woman he called his daughter. She interrupted him with a touch and a word. And the daughter of Jairus died because Jesus ran out of time.

It must have been an embarrassing moment. Imagine how that pushy woman must have felt. The word of death came, says Mark, "while Jesus was still speaking" to her. She stood there, healed and whole. Refreshed for the first time in years. Yet because of her demand on Jesus, death came to somebody else.

Imagine how that woman must have felt. She had been sick for twelve years. If only she had waited another fifteen minutes, Jesus could have healed the little girl first. The woman could have pushed to the front of the line then to touch the edge of his garment. I mean, her timing was all wrong.

Not only that, it must have put Jesus in an uncomfortable spot. Picture the girl's father. Jairus insisted that Jesus come to his house and help. The man stood by patiently as Jesus paused along the way. He grew hopeful as Jesus restored the sick woman. But then came the message from his house: "Jairus, don't trouble the teacher any further. Your daughter is dead."

In the face of such news, what should Jesus say? "Sorry, Jairus, I meant to heal your daughter, but I guess I got held up." No, he couldn't say that. It's a difficult dilemma. Jesus meant to heal one, instead healed another, and the first one died.

As you know, Jesus eventually goes to the house and raises the little girl from the dead. But that merely suspends the problem; it doesn't solve it. Because we all know that for every person who ever gets healed of a disease, someone else will suffer and pass. For every person who can push through the crowd to claim the power of Christ, somebody else stands close at hand, having just lost a daughter or son.

I guess we need to take a little time away from the story to sort it out. Sometimes people get well. Sometimes others do not. What can we say about that?

At moments, the words fail us. Years ago I received a phone call from a pastor friend. It was late and he sounded distraught. Among his hospital rounds, my friend had begun to visit a young boy from his church. The child had leukemia. There was nothing anybody could do. This minister visited faithfully through the rapid stages of the disease. They became friends. They played checkers together. They shared an occasional meal.

When the end was near, they were alone in the hospital room, quietly sharing the evening. Suddenly the boy broke the silence. He said, "Reverend, I think I know why God isn't able to make me better."

"Why is that?" said my friend.

And the boy said, "Because I think he's busy helping somebody else."

My friend said, "I left in tears, got in the car, and drove around for a while. I didn't know what to say." What can we say?  Some people get well, others do not.

The gospel of Mark would probably say, "That is the way this world is." All the gospels agree Jesus was a healer. He restored life in the face of death. Some of the stories sound quite successful. Luke says, "People came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases . . . and all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him, and he healed all of them." (Luke 6:18-19) Matthew says, "Jesus cured every disease and every sickness among the people . . . They brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them." (Matthew 4:23-34)

By contrast, Mark adds a note of restraint. Mark says, "They brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. The whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick." (Mark 1:32-34) Do you hear the difference? Jesus "cured many," not all. Many got well around him, but not everybody.

The gospel of Mark knows what you and I know: sooner or later, one way or another, all of us become sick. The warranty runs out on our moveable parts. A stain appears on the X-ray. The blood count changes without warning. Or we develop a hemorrhage that lasts twelve years. That's how it is, in a world like this. Like it or not, sooner or later, one way or another, time will run out.

Sometimes the human body develops a problem that cannot be fixed. Just like the daughter of Jairus. She died. Other times, somebody may stop the clock prematurely. That's what happened to Jesus. He was put to death on a tree. Like it or not, every human life will run its course. Mark is brutally honest about the ways things are.

One of the great illusions of our age is that we can live forever through better medicine. So we spend billions of dollars on medical research. We build machines that keep our lungs breathing. We design great drugs to keep our hearts ticking. Somebody raises the premiums to pay for all of this. Like that sick woman, we are willing to spend all that we have to clot up that hemorrhage. But it doesn’t always make us better. Maybe it buys a little time.

The gospel of Mark starts with what we know: this is a world of sickness and death. Sooner or later, every single life runs out of time.

But the gospel of Mark knows something else. Jesus came preaching, "The time is fulfilled; God's kingdom is near." He wrapped his words into deeds. And every sick person he touched became well, one person at a time. Every hopeless person who trusted his word found peace, one person at a time.

And do you know why? Two reasons, I think. The first is that the healing work of God is never anonymous. It is for this person right here, who has a name, who has a story. In the healing services that we have held four times this past year, there is a point at which the person who comes forward for prayer is asked, “For what would you like me to pray?” It’s a specific need for a specific time, and it is offered to God who alone can address it. It is not random; it is for you.

I remember that afternoon some of us spent in a mission hospital in Port au Prince. The sisters of the Missionaries of Charity welcomed us into a room of sick children. Some of these children were whimpering, some were too weak to whimper. And if you went to hold a child, you turned your back on another. And if you turned to help this one, you turned away from three behind. The need was overwhelming. My heart was breaking, my head hurt. What should I do?

A nun in blue could read my mind. She smiled and said, “We hold one at a time, for each is precious.” One at a time. This is the one in front of me, this is the one who gets my attention for now. Jesus takes the time for the woman with the hemorrhage. He does not do it from a distance; he does it for her.

And the second reason is because he has all the time in the world to get to the next person, to that little twelve year old girl. Or to put it another way, he has all the time in eternity to get to that little girl. For that is the grand secret of the Gospel of Mark, the enormous open secret of the Christian faith: in Jesus Christ, the eternal realm of God intrudes upon our world of timelines, limitations, and life spans.

In Jesus Christ, the God beyond time intrudes upon our business-as-usual. That is, even though Jesus didn't heal everybody, the day will come when he will. Even though he ran out of time, he never really runs out of time. It is his intention to make every person well, whether like the old woman they wish to be well, or like the daughter of Jairus they run out of breath. Time does not matter to Jesus, for he is the eternal healer, God in the flesh, and his slow work is to make all things well. That's the good news according to the Gospel of Mark.

So let's go back to the story . . . The messengers said, "Jairus, your daughter is dead. Don't trouble the teacher any more." But Jesus said, "Jairus, do not fear, only believe." At the house, there was a great commotion, with people weeping and wailing loudly. Jesus said, "Why do you make a great commotion? The child is not dead but sleeping." And they laughed at him, because obviously they think he doesn't know what kind of world this is.

But Jesus had the last laugh. He took the child by the hand and said, "Get up!" Immediately she got up, alive and well, and she began to walk.

In one of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, there is a character who speaks a great line. He says, "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn't have done it. He thrown everything off balance."[1]  Indeed he has. A sick woman pushed through the crowd to touch the garment of Jesus. We could expect him to rebuke her and say, "Get out of my way." Or he could have ignored her because he was busy. Instead Jesus interrupted his work to do his work.

When the interruption caused Jairus to hear the sad news that his daughter was dead, we might have thought, "Well, that's that." At best, we could expect the tardy Jesus to make an apology. Or maybe we could ask him to lead the funeral service. But Jesus has never led a funeral. Instead he presides over a Resurrection. Thanks to Jesus, this weary world has been thrown off balance. And it is slowly becoming "the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ." (Rev. 11:15)

In the meantime, whenever any of us gets healed of a disease, let’s see it for what it is: it is a sign of God's will, a sign that God’s dominion is breaking in. Whenever a surgical procedure makes us well, we are reminded of the final destiny when all shall be well. Whenever we are saved from the jaws of death, it is a blessed disruption of the world as we know it. It is a glimpse of God's new creation, already present yet still coming through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We cannot be naive. We know what kind of world this can be. There are occasions when life cannot be saved or sustained. There are moments when it looks like Jesus our savior has run out of time.

But we also know Jesus Christ will never really run out of time. For our Lord is risen. He is stronger than every power than damage, hurt, or destroy. And he will not cease his labor, until one by one, he takes each of us by the hand and raises us from the dead.

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

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[1] Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1983) 28.

Who's Running This Joint?

Mark 4:26-34

June 14, 2015

William G. Carter

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

One of my most affectionate memories of First Presbyterian Church was a day when the church was in complete chaos. People were coming and going, volunteers were folding the newsletter, a couple of people were doing an annual scrub of the nursery, and one of the self-help groups from the community was convening down the hall. Three people were lined up to talk with me about crises going on in their lives, somebody had a complaint about the flower calendar, and a jack hammer could be heard on the street corner.

In the thick of it all, some good-hearted soul stopped by to inquire about the cars in our parking lot. He wanted to know who was parking in our parking lot. He knocked on my door, opened it, nodded hello to the person that I was counseling, and said, “Who is parking in our lot?” I said, “I don’t have a clue.” He said, “Well, who is running this joint?” And I said, “God.”

With a look of absolute shock on his face, he pivoted around and went back to his car. In all the years since, I have never needed to apologize for that off-handed comment. I really do think that God is running the world. It may not be obvious, because that is the way that God exerts power over the world. God rules over all things, even if it isn’t always obvious. We have to be trained to take notice.

Jesus provides his training by telling brief stories. They are called parables. He describes a slice of life, often from nature, and waits for us to catch on. One of the parables today is a personal favorite. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a farmer who throws some seed on the ground and leaves it alone.” That’s all he says. That little story needs to germinate in our hearts for a while.

Now Jesus grew up near the country fields. He often talked about sowing the seeds, and comparing it to God’s kingdom. Earlier in chapter four, he speaks of a sower who throws his seed all over the place. Some seed falls on a hardened path. Some falls on rocky soil. Some seed has no root and gets choked out by weeds. Some of the seed falls in fertile soil.

I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that one is true. Some people cross their arms and close their ears whenever God is speaking, so no Gospel grows in them. Others seem receptive, but they don’t work at it, so the Word withers within them. Still others are enthusiastic at first, but then they get distracted by working, and vacationing, and making money, and staying entertained all the time, and over-programming their kids to make them just as successful and exhausted as themselves; forget about the seed of God’s Word. But then there are some who hear, who receive, who grow, who bear fruit – and praise God for them.

Or there’s that other parable about a seed, which Jesus tells immediately after this one. He said the kingdom of God is like the smallest little seed. It begins as this little tiny thing, but it grows and grows until it becomes the largest of shrubs.

At least one scholar thinks Jesus is poking fun at the cedars of Lebanon, those enormous trees up north that adorned the great palaces of his time. If so, it’s quite a joke, because the mustard shrub was a weed. And when it grew, it could take over a whole field. Jesus said, “God’s kingdom starts small, and then it grows like a weed.” It is as invasive as the kudzu in a South Carolina tree.

Now, we can understand that one, too. When Jesus told that one, the Roman Empire laughed and said, “You are delusional.” But when a friend did some mission work in Zaire, he said the Christian church is growing out of sight. In one small town, he joined up with a preacher who did 450 baptisms in a single day. It was exhausting. They were begging to be baptized. Finally the preacher said, “Listen, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, and I’ll baptize some more of you then.”

A small seed grows beyond human control. God’s presence among us can be like that.

But the parable for today is different. It is quite bashful and understated. The farmer scatters the seed and then goes about other business. He goes to sleep, gets up in the morning, goes back to bed, gets up in the morning, goes back to sleep. One day he wakes up and suddenly there’s a crop. It happened when nobody was looking.

What’s remarkable is how restrained the parable is. It doesn’t declare how God works, nor does it invite us to do anything more to help the seed grow. No, the growth is a mystery. Listen to that: it’s a mystery.

It’s like the year when I discovered that my front lawn had grubs. I was raking my front yard one spring. I scratched the dry patch with the rake, and the turf came right up. Then I saw a big fat segmented bug wiggling away. That’s bad news in a neighborhood where people pay a lot of attention to their lawns.

So I went off to Lowe’s and got the necessary items. In the shopping cart went a bag of Grub Poison, a bag of starter fertilizer, a bag of top soil to patch the affected area, and a bag of Scott’s finest grass seed. My first task was to hold a funeral for the grubs. The grubicide was spread, and then I murmured the minister’s words, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I could hear the grubs yelling in defiance, and I even took a little pleasure in it.

After a suitable grieving period, I opened a bag of top soil, raked it around, sprinkled a little starter fertilizer, and threw down some grass seed. The garden hose kept the area nice and wet. But time past and nothing happened. It was frustrating. It got so bad I started muttering to the grass seed: “Come on now, get growing!” Nothing happened. I was disgusted.

I got tired of waiting and moved on to other projects.  One night I walked by those dirt patches and said, “If you don’t start growing, I’m going to find some more grubs.” That didn’t work. In a couple more days, I looked outside and there were little shoots of green all over. I’d like to take credit for my green thumb, but I know better.

If you have ears to hear, listen. Jesus says, “The kingdom is like a farmer who throws some seed and leaves it alone.”

That’s hard for us to do. We don’t want to leave anything alone. We hover over our crops, we circle around our projects, we buy cell phones for our children so we can call them at any moment and say, “Where are you? What are you doing?” As somebody quipped, the cell phone is now the world’s longest umbilical cord.

Hovering has become a habit for a lot of people. My nephew worked in a college admissions office for a while. He said, “You wouldn’t believe how many parents actually write their children’s college admission essays.” They stop at nothing to get their kids into the college of their choice.

So it is no wonder this little parable of Jesus is almost universally ignored. Most of us like to keep in touch, to stay involved, to remain concerned. It is difficult to be reminded of how many human situations are out of our control. It’s even more difficult to leave important matters in the hands of God.

I know all about that. I’m a pastor. Every day, I am surrounded by situations that I cannot fix. I really do wish I could fix everything. Sometimes I’m even tempted to think that I can, that maybe if I put in a twelve hour day, everything will go better. But good people still get deadly diseases. Well-educated folks make big mistakes. Pleasant people can be overcome by depression and despair. And one of my daughters told me that a high school classmate recently died of a drug overdose; the deep irony is that he was a pre-med student.

If there’s anything we can all agree on, it’s that the whole world needs a lot of help. The challenge of a parable like the one for today is the challenge of trusting that God is going to fix it. The wise farmer sows the seed; ultimately he or she has to trust that God is finish what we cannot. No amount of shouting over the seed is going to make it grow. We have to trust that another force is at work in the world. We have to trust in God.

The kingdom is like this: we sow the seeds, and go to sleep. And while we’re sleeping, while we are faithfully out of control, God gets busy.

It’s like the story of Martin Luther, the great reformer. Germany was in turmoil, and Luther was leading the charge to dig deeper into the Gospel. The story goes that somebody complimented him one day for his leadership of the Christian revival in Germany. Luther said, “Oh, I have little to do with it.”

“But Dr. Luther, you are a wonderful preacher.” And Luther replied, “Well, I preach my sermons, but then I go home to drink my Wittenburg beer and wait for the Holy Spirit to get to work.” Not a bad story for us to recall on a Sabbath day.

Or there’s that story in one of Frederick Buechner’s books. A Princeton history professor rebukes a preacher with all the terrible things that Christians have done in the name of Christ. And he is thorough; he has a really long list. The preacher’s name is Leo Bebb. And Bebb says, “Professor, I agree the world is full of manure.” (I’m cleaning up the story).

“But look closely at the manure,” he says, “and when you see something green growing, that is the hand of God. God is where something is growing out of the decay and the rot. God is where there’s something no bigger than the head of a pin starting to inch up out of the stink and dark towards the light of day. God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son down here into the manure with the rest of us so something green could happen, something small and green and hopeful.”[1]

Don’t misunderstand: we do what we can. We always do what we can. But ultimately, the Gospel, the Kingdom, and the salvation of the world is not about us. We do our part; we trust God with everything else.

That’s what Jesus says. And do you know what he does immediately after saying this?  He goes to sleep. He says to the disciples, “Let’s row across the lake.” And as they do all the rowing, Jesus falls asleep. A great storm blows in, the waves splash over the sides, and the boat is getting swamped – and the whole time, Jesus is snoring. What is this? A sleeping Savior? Is he so in charge that he can take a nap? Of course he is.

In fact, I remember one of the first stories in the book of Genesis. God works hard for six days. God makes a world and fills it with life. And what does God do on the seventh day? God takes a break. God is so completely in charge that everybody -- God included -- can rest.

This is the Mystery at the heart of today’s text. What is the kingdom of God like? Jesus said, “A farmer scattered some seed and went to sleep. He did not hover. He did not stand over top of the seed and scream at it to start growing. He did his part and let God do the rest.” 

Do I believe that’s the way God is?

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

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[1] Paraphrased from Frederick Buechner, Lion Country, in The Book of Bebb (New York: HarperCollins, 1979) pp. 350-351.