Song for a Sabbath Day

Psalm 92

June 16, 2013

Sabbatical Beginning

William G. Carter

A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 
to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, 
to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. 
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. 

How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep! 
The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this: 
though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever,  but you, O Lord, are on high forever. 
For your enemies, O Lord, for your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered. 

But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil. 
My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. 

The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 
They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. 
In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap, 
showing that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

    Yesterday at the breakfast table, it was suggested that I stand to announce, “I have begun the sabbatical early. There is no sermon today.” Oh, that would be too easy. And I’m still on the clock until the benediction.

    So what do I wish to say before then? I want to say a lot of things. You should know that; I have been here a long time.  

     I will say thank you. Thank you for coming to worship. I never take that for granted. Week after week, many of you are here. You know that the Christian life is sustained by ritual and routine. We do the same things week after week, and that makes a difference. The person who blows in here, expects a quick one-time fix, car still running, is going to be disappointed. Not because we are not witnessing to the life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ, we are. But it takes a while for the good news of God to sink in. It takes repeated exposure to the announcement that God so loves each one of us so much that God wishes to salvage the world. This will not sink in unless we hear the words over and over. And I thank all of you who keep coming back to hear it. Never let laziness nor neglect creep in.

    I want to say thank you for the Session and the Deacons, those marvelous people who serve this church by their leadership. Some of them flip good pancakes, some of them watch over our mission work. They share the leadership work with me, and just because I slip away for a brief sabbatical, the work is well-grounded and widely shared. Our church is in good shape because of their concern to make the Gospel real. Nothing is going to fall apart, because everything is held in God’s hands. Everything! No worries, if we leave it all in God’s hands.

    I want to say thank you, in particular, to the church staff. They work so hard that they will not even notice I’m missing. I thank the Worship/Music/Arts committee for setting up the entire next year’s worship services; they know what my sermon titles will be on next January 19 and March 23. We like to plan ahead together. And the Adult Education planning team is set to go for the fall; I return to teach one of the three weekly classes that begin in September; my class will be a Bible study. The first sessions are scheduled and you are required to come.

    I want to say thank you to the Rev. Roger Griffith. My good friend comes out of his busy retirement to replace me for the next three months. You will hear him pray at the end of the service, you may hear him play his bass guitar if you encourage him as you encourage me, and by the end of the summer, I know he will be your good friend. No worries; Roger that!

    I want to thank my family. They are going to see far too much of me this summer, so be sure to pray for them.

    And I want to thank whoever composed the Psalm that we heard this morning, Psalm 92. We don’t have a clue who that is. But an editor has left chocolate fingerprints at the top of the age. After the Psalm was composed, the editor added a few words in Hebrew as a matter of description. This is “a Song for the Sabbath Day.” No other Psalm gets that description. No other Psalm is pinned to a particular day of the week, much less the Sabbath.

    You can hum the first stanza of the Psalm. It sounds of singing, music, and melody. The Sabbath is not intended to be silent. No, it’s a time for joyful noise, for declaring the saving grace of God by day and night. We declare with our lips and strum our stringed instruments. It’s all there in the first stanza: to say thanks, to sing praises. Sabbath is music that gladdens our hearts and sets us free to sing.

    The second stanza reminds us that our singing is contested. God makes us a musical world, but some folks don’t seem to pick up the tune. Mostly they are of two types. The poet calls one group “The Evildoers.” They sprout up like weeds and seem for a time to get their own wicked way. The Evildoers announce with their deeds that they have no need for God. Oh no, they are a world unto themselves. They stomp along and think that whatever they do will last forever. The Eternal God looks at them and groans.

    Then there’s the other group that cannot sing.  The Psalmist simply calls them “stupid.” The Hebrew word is translated “dullard” or “dolt.” These are the people who just don’t get it. This has nothing to do with their intelligence; it’s something far worse. God puts a rainbow in front of them, and they look down at their watches. God. God gives them a world of intricate design, and they think it’s flat. God creates whales that leap, sparrows that sing, seas that split in two, and they yawn. The Hebrew Bible smirks at such people and calls them fools.

    Because, you see, our lives are about God. God gives us breath, first to receive, then to exhale in praise. God surrounds us with wonders, glorious gifts of sense and sound, some of them with saving power. Yet it’s possible to ignore all of this. The Evildoers go their own way, indifferent to God’s holy purposes. And the Stupid Dolts – well, maybe I shouldn’t dismiss them so quickly. Ten years ago on my honeymoon, my wife and I went to the Canadian Rockies. It was too much beauty to take in. By the fifth day or so, I remember distinctly saying, “Ho hum, another 10,000 foot high mountain. No big deal.” Any sense of wonder was shut down; that was my sin.

    So Psalm 92 is our Song for the Sabbath Day. Sabbath is the time we take to shrug off our neglect, to open our hearts to God’s holy extravagance. It’s the time we take to move ourselves out of the supposed center of the universe and to let God rule gently and firmly, especially over those situations that we cannot control.

    That points us to the last stanza of the psalm. I love the three verbs: flourish, grow, planted. The well-balanced life is compared to three trees.

• The righteous flourish like a palm tree. Ever see the lushness of a tropical palm? They are so full of life they have to be trimmed so they can flourish even more.
• The righteous grow like the cedars of Lebanon. These cedars were the legendary trees of antiquity. They grew tall and straight, were reported to have medicinal powers, and were cut for the great temple of Solomon.
• Then there is the tree laden with fruit, described as still productive in its old age. Old age in the time of this Psalm, by the way, was somewhere after fifty. If you were fifty, you were old – but you could still be productive, still green, still full of sap, and still pointing to the Lord, the source of all life.

    So this Psalm pushes us to ask ourselves what it will take to flourish, to grow, to stay planted and to remain productive. These are the Sabbath tasks, the Sabbatical tasks. The poet of Psalm 92 believes that Sabbath rest  makes room for us to flourish and be fruitful.

     Now you’re not going to hear that from the Evildoers or the Dullards, especially in our culture.  We live in driven times, with 24-7 accessibility and demand. How many times have you heard it? I called you on your cell phone, why didn’t you answer?

    Or the retired person will say, “I am busier now than when I was working.” Well, what is that about? If it is about flourishing, growing, staying planted and productive -- good for you. That is the blessing of God!

    But should we fall into the obsessions and addictions of our culture, we need the word that God speaks in the Ten Commandments: “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy . . . Remember you were slaves in Egypt, and God brought you out of there.” That is why we rest from labor – to show that we belong to God, and not to our labor. It is proof of our freedom from slavery.

    This is especially important if we enjoy our work. Some of us have that blessing; I love the work that I do, and I love the people that I work around. Most days, I can’t wait to get to it. Most nights, I have a hard time shutting down. It’s a blessing to love your work. But God invites us to take Sabbath, so that we can realign our loves. We take the time to love God more than our work.

    The truth of the matter is, as good as our work can be, it can wear us out. I remember the week, some fifteen months ago. It was a good week, it was a long week, it was the week that I first considered taking this sabbatical. In the middle of the week, I was called upon to do the funeral for a three-year-old boy who fell out of a high-rise window in Scranton. The family’s church did not have a pastor, so I was called. The father of the child was serving a prison term, and would be accompanied by well-armed guards.

    He arrived late, due to highway construction. When he hobbled down the church aisle in leg-irons, he waved to his family and friends with a big smile. Then it hit him where he was, and what we were doing, and he fell apart. It was a tough day, for him, for everybody. I had the privilege of leading them through it, and then I went home to stare at the walls for a while. But I didn’t have long, because the next day was Maundy Thursday and I needed to write that sermon and a few others after it. The really hard work was doing it with a smile. Sometimes hard work just goes with the territory.

    All of us know this. Everybody has demands in the work that they do. To stay focused, to keep going, to still believe there is a sun in the sky, we need to keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath is time, time that is full of spaciousness. As John Calvin once wrote, Sabbath is time to rest from our work so that God can work in us. Or in the words of Psalm 92, “To stay green and full of sap.”

    Isn’t that what we want? To get through life alive! For our souls to be free to sing! To know deep in our bones that God is the Rock upon which we stand! To keep doing the work God gives us to do with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love!

    You see, God is concerned for our well-being. God gave us these lives and wants us to flourish. That’s why Sabbath was not given as an obligation, but as a gift. It is commanded of us because we forget how good God is, but it is always a gift --- a gift of time for us to rest from what consumes us, to receive the Spirit that God wants us to have.

    As I take some Sabbath time this summer, I invite you to do the same. What is it that is going to keep you green and full of sap? Or in the words of the Lilly Endowment that provides funding for this particular sabbatical, “What is it that makes your soul sing?” Aye, there is a worthy question. And I hope it nips your heels for the next three months until you are overflowing with the joy of God.

    May this day be for you such a time of blessed Sabbath that you wish to repeat it over and over. And may God make you to flourish, body and soul, in the time while we are apart. I love you and I will see you in September.

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

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.