Pastor Everett's Page

2008-05-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

"Worship as Counter-Culture"

Rev. Everett L. Miller

Those challenging words of the Apostle Paul to the Christians in Rome, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” have echoed throughout the past 20 centuries and still confront us everyday of our lives. There is to be something fundamentally different about a Christian after he or she has been transformed by the renewing of their mind by God. Life just isn’t the same as it was before. Everything, from the words we speak and the way we treat people, to the forgiveness we offer to others and the way we use our talents and our resources have to be looked at through transformed lenses, through the eyes of Christ.

In our modern lives time might be the biggest commodity of all and the most difficult to manage because there is always a fixed amount of it. No matter how hard you try you cannot stretch a day any longer than 24 hours. A pastoral counselor I knew in Austin used to tell the group of students that met with her, “You cannot add anything on to your schedule unless you are willing to take something away. There are only 24 hours in a day. You will never have time unless you make time.” She told us that in regard to Scripture reading, prayer, and meditation. So often our culture sends the message that we are not doing enough. Make sure your kids are in sports, music, tutoring, community service clubs, youth group, etc. Even a lot of retired people are so busy they can’t find time to actually retire. I’m as bad as anyone. Yes I’ll do that and that and that and that. But we can only go on that way for so long, until we are burned out or until we realize that that is not what life is all about. Then we come to realize that Paul’s words, “do not be conformed to this world,” has a great deal to say about viewing our time in a way that is counter to our culture, viewing our time through Christ’s eyes. And at no time is this more important, perhaps, than in Christian worship.

As we have discussed at length as of late, it is the Holy Spirit, which draws us into this life of Christian faith and service even though this life is counter to our culture. At least for my age group, for the people born around the time that I was, and even for my family, it is quite counter-cultural just to be willing to have faith in Jesus Christ and to attempt to live out the Christian life. But it isn’t just this way for today’s young people. It is that way for everyone. To be Christian and to really care about what that means is a counter-cultural act. Sometimes it is even counter to the culture of the church itself. Although there have been times in history when it seemed that everyone in America was a Christian and everyone went to worship on Sundays, I would imagine that even when almost everyone went to church, it was still just as rare to find real Christians. For those who do believe in something it is counter-cultural these days to be willing to say what you believe in. If it cannot be proven, if it cannot be seen, if it cannot be measured, and if we cannot show exclusive video of it on the nightly news, then it is not worth believing in it. It is counter to our culture to put yourself after God and even after others. It is counter to our culture to say, “God what do you want me to be? What do you want me to do?,” instead of saying, “Here is what I am going to be and do and here are the seven steps that will get me there.” It is counter to our culture to be still, to be silent when there is so much to do.

The early Christians were disliked by the Romans for the most part because they were counter to Roman culture. The early Christians didn’t have temples, they wouldn’t offer sacrifices to the gods, they very often refused to serve in the military, and they refused to declare that Caesar is Lord. The early Christians were derided as atheists because they did not believe in the Roman gods and they would not pledge their allegiance to the Roman state. They would not participate in the culture as it was offered to them. They were counter-cultural, but in a very specific way that isn’t concerned about appearances but with the kingdom of God.

At the top of the list of counter-cultural activities by Christians (and really all religious people) is worship. Worship is one of the most counter-cultural acts in which we participate in our lives. This may come as a surprise to many of you who have barely missed a Sunday in sixty or seventy years. Worship is just a part of your lives and maybe it always has been, but if you were to skip church one Sunday and go to restaurants, or the golf courses, or knock on people’s doors during our worship hour, you would begin to believe me when I say that worship is counter to our culture. Our culture does not know what to do with worship.

Two aspects of life that are given a great amount of value in our society are production and individuality. Worship does not produce anything. Worship does not allow us to do whatever we want to as individuals. In fact, worship calls us away from production and away from individuality.

For our Jewish friends from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday is the Sabbath. For religious Jews the Sabbath is not just another day. It’s not even just a day when you go to synagogue worship then do whatever else you want to. It is a day of worship and rest. It is a divinely commanded day of being anti-productive and anti-individualistic. That’s the point for Jews. The Sabbath is counter-cultural. The Sabbath is different. It is a time that is outside of time. The great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel asks the following questions in response to God’s command to keep the Sabbath holy: Is it possible for a human being to do all his work in six days? Does not our work always remain incomplete? What the verse means to convey is: Rest on the Sabbath as if all your work were done.” Now that is a counter-cultural statement about worship and the keeping of holy time.

We, as Gentile Christians, do not tend to keep the Jewish Sabbath. Instead, we worship on Sunday, the first day of the week, which we call the Lord’s Day. We gather on this day to worship because it was on the first day of the week that God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, inaugurating the new creation. We step out of our extremely important lives of productivity—being farmers and bankers and teachers and mothers—to do something which is in its very essence non-productive. We stop to turn to God’s Word, to sing songs of praise, to pray as a group, to share our joys and concerns with one another, to pray for the world and our neighbors, and to catch up and hug one another in Christ’s name. We set aside our individualities to become a group. It is a weekly re-membering of the body of Christ. Although we are to live every minute of our lives in gratitude for God’s grace and to do every single task we have, no matter how menial it may seem, as though we were doing it for Christ, there is something special about this hour to hour and a half on Sunday mornings. It is a time that we have set aside and dedicated to God.

I remember once in the room with the choir before worship at the Guthrie church. One of the choir members said, “We need to get out there. It’s time for worship to start.” Another one of the choir members who was kind of a cantankerous guy said, “They can wait. They won’t start without us.” Then one of the elders of the church spoke up. “No. It’s not just that we promised them we’d start at 10:45. We set an appointment with God at 10:45.” It is important to set aside time dedicated to God, a time when we have said, “We will not go by the rules of the culture during this hour. We will not worry about productivity. We will not put ourselves first. This is not a time to do, but a time to be with God and one another.” That is why worship is so important. It is a weekly glimpse of what we can be with God’s help. It is a glimpse of what it is like to be dedicated to God and to be a member of God’s community. Then we take the experience we have in worship into our daily lives.

People come to worship for many different reasons. The same is true for people who do not take time to worship. One of the reasons people don’t worship is that they are so busy Monday through Saturday that Sunday is the only day they have to sleep in and to spend time at home. Some people don’t come to worship at traditional churches like ours because there isn’t enough going on. There isn’t anything to keep them interested and engaged. And I can understand both of those. I have to admit to you that although I am your pastor and love being your pastor, I, like you, sometimes have a Sunday when I would rather sleep in or go sit at Starbuck’s and sip on a coffee while reading a good book. Some Sundays I just want to be by myself or be with my family. But that’s why worship is so important. Because it reminds me that my life is not my own, my time is not my own, and that I must be drawn out of myself and into God and the gathered body of Christ.

Some of the older folks at one of the Native American congregations I served that one summer when I was in seminary used to tell me about how when they were little if you didn’t show up for worship you would get a knock on your door while worship was going on. You would open the door to find a couple of the church elders standing there with a tall wooden staff that they’d used to knock on the door. They would firmly remind you that this is worship time and nothing else. Then you would guiltily put your church clothes on and head up to the church building. The elders of that congregation didn’t care whether or not you wanted to worship or felt that you needed to worship because the rest of the congregation needed you there at worship and because if you think you don’t need to worship you are wrong. Can you imagine waking up on a Sunday morning to see Jim Crossland and Dorothy Leaming standing on your front porch carrying staffs asking you what it is that you think you are doing during the worship hour?

In the 2nd Helvetic confession from 16th century Switzerland, which is in our Book of Confessions, it reads: “Meetings for Worship not to be Neglected: As many as spurn such meetings and stay away from them, despise true religion, and are to be urged by the pastors and godly magistrates to abstain from stubbornly absenting themselves from sacred assemblies.” Can you imagine getting a nice greeting card with the pretty picture of the church building on the outside only to open it up and to see a nice note from me urging you “to abstain from stubbornly absenting yourself from sacred assemblies”?

While both of those examples come from different times and different cultures than our own and you don’t have to worry about Jim and Dorothy interrupting your Sunday morning coffee when you decide to play hooky from church and you don’t have to worry every time you open a card from me that you will be called stubborn, they illustrate how important worship is not just for the life of the individual Christian but even more so for the life of the faith community as a whole. You may not feel the need to be here, but the rest of us need you here. As I’ve said, worship is counter to our culture and counter even to what we want to do sometimes. Worship is not about me. That’s hard for all of us to stomach.

I have heard people say that they go to worship to be fed spiritually. While that does make sense in regard to the words of the Psalmist, “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” and in Jesus’ saying that he is the bread of heaven, I am always bothered by it because I think it is incomplete. For some people, and probably for all of us at one time or another, worship is like going to a restaurant where they provide the food and we eat it. We want it to be like the wonderful old Native American ladies in Seminole who would invite me over to eat and absolutely refuse my help in any way. They provided the food. I provided the appetite. Worship is not like that, at least not in the Reformed tradition. The pastor and liturgist are not spiritual restaurateurs and this is not a spiritual super-buffet. Communal worship is more like a pot-luck dinner where everyone brings something to the table and we all enjoy it together, even if the pastor and the liturgist act as waiters. It doesn’t matter what songs we sing, what prayers we pray, or what the sermon says, if everyone in the room is not prepared for worship and is not willing to offer something in the worship of God. If you have a spiritual appetite, remember that everyone else does too, so bring food to share. So I would rather than hear someone say, “I was fed,” say, “We all cooked and we all were fed.”

I saw a story on the news not too long ago about a school program that is teaching kids how to cook healthy meals. The parents weren’t taking the initiative on the diet of their kids so the school did. They tried all kinds of educational programs—speakers, videos, and workbooks. But it wasn’t sinking in. So they recruited local chefs to teach the kids how to pick out the ingredients, how to prepare them, and how to serve them. Then the parents of all the kids in the class came to the school cafeteria for a fancy multi-course dinner all prepared by the kids with the help of their parents. Then after cooking together they all sat down and ate. It was amazing the effect it had on the families. They hadn’t just been fed, they offered themselves and enabled others to be fed as well. So it is with worship. The worst Sundays that I have had as a worship leader have had very little to do with how things went during the worship service. Those Sundays were bad not because there wasn’t enough for me to eat, so to speak, but because I showed up without my dish to share.

Just before Paul writes the words, “Do not be conformed to this world,” he writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Paul is talking about offering your whole life as a worshipful sacrifice to God, as opposed to worship in the Jewish temple, which offered an animal’s death as a worshipful sacrifice to God. This is about a total transformation in your life, Paul is saying. Give everything you have to God, especially yourself. He knows this is a counter-cultural thing to say. But it is necessary, he claims, so that “you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Be who God wants you to be, not who the world wants you to be. Do what God wants you to do, not what the world wants you to do.

I’ve heard it said that we have forgotten that we are human beings and we have become human doings. That is one of the reasons that worship is so important. Because in worship we do not produce anything and we are drawn out of individuality and into community. We catch a glimpse of who we can be with God. It is a scheduled, dedicated, sacred time of being who God wants us to be and doing what God wants us to do, so that we can carry that out into our everyday lives. We praise, we confess, we forgive, we sing, we pray, we listen, we speak, we are generous in giving, we fellowship, and nothing that can be measured or sold comes out of it. We don’t come just to be fed but to share with others. Our culture does not know what to do with worship, and that’s okay as long as we do.

2008-05-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

"Who are We that You are Mindful of Us?"

A Biblical Theological Anthropology

Rev. Everett L. Miller

In Psalm 8, David gratefully asks the question of God, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” David knows that the infinite, creative, holy God that he worships does not have to care for him or for any other person. So he asks this rhetorical question as an act of praise and thanks for the fact that God chooses to care for humanity. This is a question that has kept philosophers and theologians and all of us regular folks busy for millennia. Who are we human beings in relation to God?

Well, if you believe in the God of the Scriptures, the first thing you would say about humanity is that on the most basic level, human beings are creations of God. But so are dogs and fleas and grass and trees. We all know there is something different about us, though, or at least there should be. This is what the author of Genesis calls, “the image of God.” In Genesis 1 we read, “ Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them and God blessed them.”

When the Jews lived in exile in Babylon they were surrounded by a religion that had a very different view of where humanity came from. The Babylonians’ creation myth said that two Gods, Marduk and Tiamat fought a war. Marduk killed Tiamat and used her insides to create the heavens and the earth. Then Marduk killed Tiamat’s husband and used his blood to create human beings as slaves to the gods. So the Babylonians believed that humanity came forth from violence and were simply slaves to the gods. The Jews, on the other hand, said that their God created humanity peacefully, with care, with blessing, and even in God’s own image. This is a very different way of looking at things: that human beings weren’t just made to be useful but also to be in relationship with God and one another. David says that human beings have been made “a little lower than God, and crowned…with glory and honor.”

So humanity is created by God in the image of God, which could include all kinds of things like reason, self-awareness, love, creativity, etc. But unfortunately any time we talk about humanity from a Christian perspective, we can’t stop with our being created in the image of God, but we must also talk about the distortion of that image: sin. It is not very popular to talk about sin, or to even use that word, in many circles these days. Even in the circles in which sin is a safe subject to bring up, it is usually only other peoples’ sin that is talked about. But as Paul says about humanity: “There is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin is the common condition of humanity.

And sin isn’t just the bad stuff we do, the individual mistakes we make, but the condition of humanity as a whole. In a very real way, if someone does not believe in the reality of sin, then the entire gospel begins to unravel, because if you are not a sinner, you do not need a savior. Sin is a fact. It exists. The Scriptures tell us that when God created humanity, sin wasn’t the original plan, but we human beings, from the very beginnings decided that we could get by on our own, without our loving Creator, in whose image we are all created. The prophet Isaiah puts it this way: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way.”

If you recall, last week I mentioned the time in history called the Enlightenment and an idea that went along with it, that of Deism or the belief that God created the world to run on its own then left. Another idea that came out of this time period is that humanity could do well on our own to continue making the world a better place and working toward peace through advances in the sciences. While I think all of us are thankful for things like penicillin and the automobile, this idea that we could do just fine on our own came to be questioned during the 20th Century. Why would that be? Well here are a few reasons: World War I, when the wonderful advances of the human race resulted in the first modern war and the deaths of 15 million human beings created in God’s image. The Nazi Holocaust when well over 6 million Jewish, Catholic, Homosexual, and other people created in the image of God were murdered in the Nazi effort to create a “better” and “more advanced” society. And World War II, the deadliest war ever, when human ingenuity led to the deaths of 55 million human beings created in the image of God. After witnessing the bloodiest century in the history of humankind, even many religiously skeptical people began to realize that when we humans are left to our own devices, tragic events often occur.

Despite the often tragic consequences, we human beings have chosen to go our own way and brought sin into the world. This sin causes separation from God, from one another, from the rest of creation, and even from ourselves through the severing or perverting of these relationships. When we pervert these relationships, no matter what kind of relationship it is, that is sin against God because ultimately all of our relationships, whether with people or things, reflect our relationship with God.

Theologians argue over whether or not sin can be defined as one particular overarching impulse. For many sin can be defined as pride of some sort. Yet, for many others it can be described as a lack belief in their own importance. Both are put in check by God. To the prideful person, God might say, “You only have importance because of me. Get over yourself.” To the person who does not believe in their own importance, God might say, “You are extremely important because of me. I want you and other people need you.” In both of these, God turns us out of ourselves and to God and others. In fact, St. Augustine believed that the Fall and sin were basically a turning in on yourself and away from the other and God. This can happen to individuals, to families, even to churches and communities. Some say that sin is basically selfishness and everything that stems from it.

I have also heard it said that sin is basically the fact that we are prone to do anything to avoid being human, meaning we either try our hardest to be more than human or to be less than human. By more than human I mean that we go after power over other people or creation; we attempt to be self-reliant and to replace God. By less than human I mean that we begin to act like animals by giving into any violent or sexual urge that might hit us.

While I think all of these definitions of sin do a pretty good job of exploring the issue, I also really like the church reformer John Calvin’s idea of sin as well. He says that fundamentally sin is lack of trust in God. This would mean that everything from violence to greed to self-loathing to oppression to racism all goes back to a lack of trust in God. That’s certainly worth thinking about.

So far we know that biblically speaking human beings are creations of God, created in God’s own image to be in relationship with God and one another, and that we are blessed by God. Yet, we also know that we human beings have chosen to go our own way and brought sin into the world. This sin is not just the individual things that we do, but it is the common condition of humanity which has been described in numerous ways such as pride or severed or perverted relationships with God, one another, creation, and ourselves. It has been called a refusal to be human, meaning the constant attempts to be more than human or less than human. It has been described as an underlying lack of trust in God. And it has been described as turning in on yourself or selfishness. This infests not only individuals, but communities, societies, and economic systems.

And if we as human beings are honest about it, we admit that no matter how hard we try there is nothing that we can do about it on our own. As the Apostle Paul wrote of himself in Romans 7: “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.” This isn’t a cop-out, a sort of “the devil made me do it” statement. This is just the realization that no matter how hard you try to escape from sin you can’t do it. And here’s the kicker: nothing can happen to fight against this predicament until you or I or whoever comes to the realization that this is the case.

This brings me back to John Calvin. He spent his entire adult life working on his gigantic two volume theological masterpiece, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. And in the very first sentence of the more than 1,500 pages he writes, “Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” From the very get-go Calvin is saying that if you are going to try to come to know God then you better be prepared to get to know yourself and admit some things about yourself before you can know anything about God.

This process of getting to know ourselves is often not very fun. One of my favorite authors, Frederick Beuchner writes, “The voyage into the self is long and dark and full of peril, but I believe that it is a voyage that all of us will have to make before we are through.” John Calvin puts it this way: “We cannot seriously aspire to [God] before we begin to become displeased with ourselves. For what [person] in all the world would not gladly remain as he [or she] is—what [person] doesn’t remain as he [or she] is—so long as he [or she] does not know himself [or herself].” Let me repeat the first part of that statement: “We cannot seriously aspire to God before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.”

On the very first page of this enormous theological classic, Calvin seems to be saying that each of us must come to grips with the fact that I am a sinner just like everybody else and there is nothing I can do about it on my own. Each of us must come to the point where we say with the Apostle Paul, “Wretched [person] that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” This is the beginning of knowledge about yourself and subsequently knowledge of God. Because as Calvin says, “the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to [God].” This is the theological version of the old psychological truth that you cannot get help for your problem until you admit that you have a problem.

When I was in college, this book, called Life After God by an author named Douglas Coupland was one of my favorite books. I’m not sure why I liked it so much because it is a pretty depressing book about a young man who is leading a kind of pointless and sad existence filled with broken relationships and addictions. Maybe I liked it because at the end of over two hundred pages of these desperately sad and introspective stories, on the next to last page the narrator says this:

Now here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”

The narrator of that book seems to have come to the dark, yet freeing realization that “We cannot seriously aspire to [God] before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.”

So who are we human beings? We are creations of God, each and every single one of us all over the world beautifully created in God’s own image to be in relationship with God and with one another. Yet we have chosen to go our own way and subsequently sin is the common condition of humanity. We are sinners, each and every single one of us all over the world and there is nothing that we can do about that fact on our own. As the narrator of Douglas Coupland’s book says, “[we are] sick and can no longer make it alone. [We] need God to help [us] give, because [we] no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help [us] be kind, as [we] no longer seem capable of kindness; to help [us] love, as [we] seem beyond being able to love.” Who are we human beings? We are sinners in need of a Savior. But there is hope. And this hope is the one who has been called “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” This hope is Jesus.

2008-05-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

"More than Just a Ticket to Heaven"

Soteriology

Rev. Everett L. Miller

Not long after I moved here, someone from a different church came by to ask me if I knew whether or not I was going to heaven if I was to die today. He didn’t ask me if I was lonely or guilt-ridden or in need of love or of a family of faith. He asked if I was to die would I go to heaven or hell. That turned my stomach, not because I’m unsure of what will happen to me after I die, but because I don’t think that is the question that needs to be asked by Christians. A while after that I was seated next to a person at an event and when she found out that we were from different denominations she said very kindly, “Well, it doesn’t matter what church you go to. It’s all about heaven, isn’t it.” Again, my stomach turned. Just a couple of weeks ago I was in Ponca City and I drove by a church sign that said, “Free Ticket to Heaven. Details Inside.” There went my stomach again. Then around the same time I received a mysterious postcard in the mail that was hand addressed to me and had a Ft. Worth postmark on it. I have no idea who sent it to me but on the back of it in bold were the words: How to Get to Heaven. Then there was a four or five step guide of isolated scripture quotes that showed how that might be achieved. Again, it turned my stomach.

You know, it’s not that the Scriptures don’t mention life after death, because the New Testament anyway, does mention it, but less often than most people think. It’s not that it isn’t a part of Christian faith, because it is. And it’s not that I don’t look forward to being within God’s love in all of its fullness after I die, because I do. It’s just that when I see the church using phrases like “Free Ticket to Heaven” and “How to Get to Heaven” as both the reason for turning to faith in Jesus Christ and the only goal of that faith, as I said earlier my stomach starts to turn because that doesn’t seem to be what is in the Bible and it certainly doesn’t seem to be what Jesus proclaimed. Punching your ticket to heaven? Is that really what salvation is all about?

Seeing as our sources of what salvation is are not always reliable, let us look at what the Bible, which is supposed to be our guide on matters of faith and ethics, says about salvation. In his letter to the Ephesians the Apostle Paul reminds his readers that “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” Most Christians agree that you cannot earn salvation from God. Jesus Christ has accomplished the work of salvation. As Paul writes in Romans, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” The Holy Spirit has been at work in your life drawing you toward God, opening your heart to repentance and building up your faith. God has made the offer to you. None of us can gain or win or steal our own salvation from God, it is a gift of grace. But we have to decide whether or not we will accept that gift and live accordingly in gratitude for God’s grace. So it is clear that salvation is a gift from God. But again, what is salvation?

Unfortunately, at least in this part of the country anyway, salvation and going to heaven when you die have become synonymous, and it would seem, all inclusive. Oftentimes Scripture verses are quoted without any context whatsoever. This is sometimes the case with the Psalms. Well, in the Psalms salvation most often means a very literal salvation from death at the hands of an enemy army. Also, in the Old Testament salvation very often refers to God’s salvation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. This is a very literal, practical way of looking at salvation. God has saved me from a very real situation in which I found myself. I have heard people say things like, “God saved me from alcoholism” or “God saved my marriage.” Yes! These are very real ways that God saves us in the here and now, and the here and now is a part of our salvation.

But when we get to the New Testament, salvation begins to take on a different tone. This is one of the big problems that Jesus faced. It seems that many people expected a very literal salvation from the Romans, which Jesus did not provide. In the gospels, however, salvation in connection with Jesus very often means forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God and others, and inclusion in God’s family. Jesus provides rescue not simply from hell, but from isolation from God and others, and from selfishness, materialism, hypocrisy, individualism, and idolatry. When it comes to Jesus if we were to ask what does Jesus say about heaven then the answer would be “not much.” But if we ask what Jesus says about salvation then we could answer, “quite a bit.” As one book I read this week states, “It’s clear that [Jesus’] message was not really about how to get to heaven. It was about a way of transformation in this world and the Kingdom of God on earth.” As Matthew might say, the kingdom of heaven has broken in to our lives here on earth.

Jesus never asks anyone if they know where they will go if they die today. Jesus never offers anyone a free ticket to heaven. Jesus never says it’s all about getting to heaven. Jesus never gives instructions on how to get to heaven. That is not the core of his ministry. In John, the gospel from which we get a lot of our information about the importance of eternal life, Jesus says, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Jesus is speaking in the present tense. This life which he offers, this eternal life, this abundant life begins now.

When we speak of the salvation offered by Jesus Christ we cannot only talk about Jesus’ teachings, though. We must also talk about the cross, which is the center of our faith as Christians. As Paul writes in Galatians, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” As Christians we believe that through Jesus, God offered forgiveness of sins and the opportunity to come back into relationship with God. And as Christians we believe that this was achieved most fully through Jesus’ death on the cross. This is the belief that Paul calls, “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” This is what people are talking about when they use a statement like, “We are saved by the blood of Jesus.” But again, Jesus didn’t die on the cross just so that we can go to heaven when we die. Jesus died on the cross because as Paul writes, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” The salvation given through the cross starts now, today is the day of salvation.

The Apostle Paul often speaks of this subject by using the phrase, new creation, as in “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old has passed away; see everything has become new!” Then just a little bit after he writes these words in 2 Corinthians he expresses the urgency of the call to become a new creation in Christ when he says, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” In other words, what are you waiting for? You could experience what it is like to be a new creation in Christ today. Then Paul goes on to list ways in which he and his partners in ministry have lived their lives as new creations in order to help others to come to the same place in their lives. He does not approach his readers with questions of their final, eternal destinies but with questions about what their life is like now and why they delay coming into relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
But in addition to this, we praise God because through Jesus’ resurrection we know that God’s salvation is so all-encompassing that we are not only saved in this life but that not even death can hold back God’s saving love, and there does come a time when we do start to think about what our salvation in Christ means for us after we die. At funerals we focus on those promises of eternal life that are in the Bible, because although it is not the only aspect of salvation or of Christian life, it is surely important, especially when you’ve lost a loved one. Then we do concentrate on passages like in 1 Thessalonians when Paul encourages his readers by saying that we will be with the Lord forever, or 1 Corinthians 15:54-56:
When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
Or Philippians 1:21-26:
For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.
Is salvation about a better life and a better world now? Yes. Is salvation about being freed into a life of reconciliation and peace and feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the prisoner, and showing overwhelming hospitality to the stranger? Yes. Is salvation about being with God in a new way after we die? Yes. But salvation is not only about any one of these things, but all of them. Salvation is all of these things. Salvation is both now and not yet. But whatever salvation is, it is not just a ticket to heaven. That church might have needed a bigger sign but I wish that that church sign said, “Liberation. Wholeness. Homecoming. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Life Together. Purpose. God’s love that never ends. Details inside.”

2008-05-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

"The Handoff"

Acts 1:6-14

Rev. Everett L. Miller

William Willimon, who is a Methodist bishop and the former Dean of the Chapel at Duke Divinity School, tells a funny story that he heard from an Episcopalian friend of his, which he calls Pastor Ed. Pastor Ed tells a story of when he was in seminary. One year on Ascension Day, the dean, the professors and all the students were in the chapel celebrating the Ascension. There was a boys choir singing Deus Ascendit, which means literally “God went up” in Latin, as the procession left the chapel, led by clouds of incense. Unbeknownst to all of the worshippers, one of the more mischievous seminary students had acquired one of those cheap hollow plastic statues of Jesus and put some sort of rocket device in it. As the procession came out of the chapel he lit the fuse and hid in the bushes. The statue shot up out of the shrubs with smoke and sparks, almost hitting some of the people as it ascended up into the air. It finally landed on top of the roof of the dorms and went out. When the dean asked him what in the world he was thinking when he did it he said sarcastically that he simply wanted to dramatize his belief in the reality of the ascension. The ascension was, in some sense, a joke to him. And even though what he did is kind of funny, it shows that the image of the ascension is not one that is always taken seriously.

Within the Presbyterian Church and most other Protestant churches, the Ascension of Jesus Christ, meaning when Jesus ascended to heaven, which we read of today in verses 9-11, is somewhat ignored both in Church doctrine and in the church year. For instance, how many of you knew that this past Thursday was Ascension Day, which is celebrated in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Episcopalian churches as a holy day? I’ve never celebrated it in my life and I had to check my calendar just to verify the date of it. But the ascension is something in which we say we believe every week when in the Apostles’ Creed we say that Jesus “ascended into heaven.” So really, what does the ascension mean to us? Does it inform our faith in Jesus Christ or does it just come across as some strange story of a Mary Poppins Jesus popping open a black umbrella and floating up into the sky?

In our passage today, Luke tells us that “[Jesus] was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” This may seem a little strange to our modern minds, but when we understand Luke’s use of biblical imagery then we begin to comprehend just how important the ascension is for our faith in Jesus. The truth of the matter is that if we get stuck on the fact that Luke tells us that Jesus went up into the sky and how that doesn’t match up with our modern knowledge that heaven isn’t up in the sky because we’ve seen pictures of the earth from outer space, we are missing the point. What Luke is telling us here is that Jesus went to be with God the Father in that realm we call heaven and for a very specific reason. After all, in the Apostles’ Creed we don’t just say “he ascended into heaven” but we add to that “and is seated on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” A divine transition was occuring.

He was taken in a cloud, which again may seem kind of strange to us, but just about any time a cloud is mentioned in the Bible we know that it represents God’s presence. There was a cloud that guided the children of Israel in the wilderness. There was a cloud that enveloped Mt. Sinai when Moses received the Ten Commandments. The prophet Daniel had a vision of the coming Son of Man who would ride upon the clouds. At Jesus’ transfiguration Jesus, Peter, John, and James were also enveloped in a cloud. God was present in a very real way on that day because the ascension is a moment of great significance marking the transition from Jesus’ earthly ministry to when Jesus went to rule as the great priest-king of the universe, ruling, judging, and praying for all of creation.

John Calvin wrote, “(Jesus) truly inaugurated his Kingdom only at his ascension into heaven.” Calvin goes on to say, “he withdrew his bodily presence from our sight not to cease to be present with believers still on their earthly pilgrimage, but to rule heaven and earth with a more immediate power.” Although we probably don’t think about the ascension all that much compared to the crucifixion and the resurrection, Jesus’ ascension to heaven is essential for our salvation. If it had not happened he would not be in a position to claim us as his own. When the world seems like it is crumbling around us, it is good to know that ultimately Jesus Christ is in charge and if it wasn’t for the ascension he wouldn’t be in charge.

But this is all easy for us to say, looking back on that day from 2,000 years later. Surely the day of Jesus’ ascension was bitter-sweet for the disciples. They weren’t surprised that it happened; they knew it was coming. After all, remember what we heard Jesus say last week: “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” A little bit after that he tells the disciples, “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.” But when it does actually happen we don’t really hear of the celebrating or rejoicing. They just kind of stand there, looking up into the sky. I imagine that even though they knew that day was coming that they hoped it never would. It’s like the day when your child graduates and moves out. Even though you’ve known it was coming for eighteen years it still hits you like a ton of bricks. Like a parent standing in the road watching their grown child drive off into the distance, the apostles are staring up into the sky thinking, “Now what?”

As they stand there dumbfounded, two men in white appear to them. This is presumably the two men in white from the empty tomb in Luke’s Gospel. They say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” These two men seem to be asking them, “There’s work to be done. Why are you just staring up into the sky?”

I have never been able to verify the truth of the story I’m about to tell you, but it makes the point so with that disclaimer I’ll tell it to you anyway. A classmate of mine in seminary told me about the huge, magnificent Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. On top of the towering spires of the temple are beautiful gold angels that reflect the sunlight. People would come from all over the world to see the temple and its golden angels. They would stand below staring up into the sky, backing up more and more trying to get a better angle so that they could see all the way to the top. Many times people would back up so much without paying attention that they would back up right into the busy street and get hit by cars. It happened so often that the Mormon Church ended up buying the street from the city and closing it off so that people could look up at the temple without getting hit by cars.

Again, I don’t know if that is true, but you can see how it makes the point. The disciples in our passage are in danger of becoming like the people who are staring into the sky, not paying attention to anything that is going on around them, like the people who keep backing up and backing up, oblivious to the cars speeding toward them. They have to tell themselves, “Quit staring up at heaven. Look around at what is going on here. Remember what Jesus said just before he ascended. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

So while Jesus has ascended so that as the Westminster Confession claims, he can “receive gifts for [humanity], raise up our affections [there], and to prepare a place for us,” he hasn’t left the disciples without a sense of purpose or without direction. He’s told them that the Holy Spirit is coming who will give them the strength and courage for their mission and he’s told them what that mission is. It is no less than to take the gospel to the entire world starting right where they are. He will no longer be with them. From now on he is going to be working through them. The ascension is, in a matter of speaking, the great handoff from Jesus to the Church.

A book I read this week put it this way: “It’s like the son who has been working in his father’s business and one day the father comes to the store and says, “Son, I’m not going to be coming in as much any more; you can handle things here.” It was a day the son knew was coming, but could he handle it? Could he keep up the things that his father had begun?” So right here in the first chapter of Acts we know that this book is going to be different from the gospels that are placed before it. Jesus isn’t going to be showing up in the flesh anymore. This book isn’t going to be all about what Jesus did when he walked this earth. Instead, this book is going to be about what Jesus did through the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church to spread God’s love and acceptance to the world. The great handoff had occurred.

Standing as descendents of the faith of the apostles, we too have been handed the very mission of Jesus. Encouraged and empowered by our belief that Jesus really did ascend into heaven and that he does sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, as well as our experience with the Holy Spirit, we take on this mission starting right where we are. Although I hope that as many of us who can and who feel led to will get to go to places like New Orleans or the Czech Republic or South America to do mission work, the truth of the matter is that it is right here in Newkirk where we are begin to live out Christ’s mission everyday. The handoff has occured. What will we do with it?

2008-03-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

"One Thing I Know"

John 9

Rev. Everett L. Miller

So often when we meditate on the Scriptures, it is easy for us to become bogged down with the many questions that come to mind about a passage, especially a passage this long, to where we actually miss the point. Why would the disciples think sin caused this man’s blindness? What is Jesus saying about sin here? Why in the world did Jesus use spit and mud on the man’s eyes when at other times he didn’t even have to be in the same town as a person to heal them with only his word? Why did Jesus tell him to go wash in a pool? Why do the Pharisees care if Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath? Shouldn’t they just be happy for the man? These are the kinds of questions I require my New Testament students to ask when they write their exegesis papers, and these are the kinds of questions I ask on Monday mornings when I sit down to read the next Sunday’s passage. But although these questions may be important at one time or another, if we tried to explore the answers to them all in one Sunday sermon we would have to hand out sack lunches because we’d miss dinner and we’d probably want to pass out pillows and blankets because not only would the sermon be long, but it would be terribly boring. In a Sunday sermon we have to find one meaning for this particular day and meditate on that meaning.

John’s Gospel, like much of the New Testament is not only concerned with the history of Jesus back then but with experiencing Jesus today. In other words, knowing about Jesus Christ is not the same as knowing Jesus Christ. One of the great criticisms of the traditional Protestant churches like the Presbyterian Church is that we very often replace knowing Christ with knowing about Christ. And it is the importance of the experience of knowing Christ that is the meaning of this passage for us today.

After Jesus puts the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him off to the pool, Jesus goes on his way. And after the man struggles to make his way to the pool and carefully bends down to use his cupped hands to splash water on his face he opens his eyes and he sees for the first time in his life. People are amazed by this and by the man’s answer, that “the man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” His neighbors then take him to the religious experts that they respect so these experts, the Pharisees, can see what has been done. They are going to answer the question of whether or not this is the work of God or the work of a charlatan. The man has already told his neighbors what he experienced, but they want a more educated religious opinion.

The Pharisees begin questioning him and they seem to miss the fact that this is a wonderful day for the man who once was blind but now can see. They don’t even seem to really doubt that Jesus performed this healing. Initially they are more concerned by the fact that Jesus performed it on the Sabbath. The Pharisees are the experts, those with the credentials. Who does this Jesus fellow think he is? He is a sinner, that’s who is. The healed man responds that he thinks he is a prophet.

The young man’s parents are brought in to be questioned. Was he really born blind? Yes. How does he see now? Ask him, they say. So the healed man who was probably out rejoicing in the sights we all take for granted is hauled back in and commanded to tell the truth about Jesus being a sinner. Up to this point nobody seems to be concerned with what the young man has experienced. They want answers, answers that make sense to them. They want him to say that God did it but that Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with that. “Give glory to God!,” they say. “We know this man is a sinner.” Then the young man gives an answer that is one of the greatest one-liners in all of Scripture. If chapter nine was being acted out on a stage I imagine the crowd clapping and laughing when they hear it. “I do not know whether he is a sinner,” the man says. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

They could ask him all day and all night to interpret what happened to him, to give good theological explanations that are acceptable to the religious experts. They could coax him and coach him and coerce him all they want but he’s having none of it, because the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t know any more than he has told them and as a matter of fact he doesn’t care. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” He is so happy that he has been healed, that the darkness has been lifted from him by the work of Jesus. He cares more about seeing the clouds move across the sky for the first time or looking into the eyes of his mother and father who have loved him since birth but who he has never seen. His life is changed, transformed, made new. What else matters? “I was blind, now I see.”

But they won’t quit. What did he do? How did he do it? Then the young man gets sarcastic with them. Do you want me to tell you again? You didn’t listen the first time. Why do you want to know? Do you want to become his disciples too? That makes them mad. I really gets them going. “We know a lot of things. We know God has spoken to Moses. But we don’t know who this Jesus guy is.” They are the religious experts and something has happened that doesn’t fit with what they know. So instead of rejoicing in the mystery or changing what they know, they just deny the goodness of what has happened. Then the man shows them up by basically saying, “You know all kinds of stuff. You have all kinds of credentials and knowledge. But now you are stumped. You are the experts yet you just can’t grasp what has happened here. I was blind, now I see. Jesus did this.” So they kick the healed man out, totally discounting his experience.

This man who has been healed has learned a lesson that the religious experts cannot find if they only look in the pages of books. In this passage the Pharisees are really representative of all religious people who allow tradition to nullify experience, instead of allowing tradition and experience to inform one another. Because of his experience, this healed man has become wiser than the highly educated and overly credentialed religious leaders. He may not have a seminary degree and he may not be able to interpret his experience with Christ very well as of yet but as he says, “I don’t know if he is a sinner or not. What I do know is that I was blind but now I see.” In other words, “I was in darkness, now I am in the light and it was Jesus who did it. I can’t quote the Bible to you from memory. I can’t quote great theologians. But my life was in shambles and Jesus turned that around.” His real life experience made him wiser than those considered wise by this world. He has learned through experience that what we learn of the healing love of Christ during times of darkness is of much greater value than what we could learn about it from reading 1,000 books.

Now, we always have to be careful not to lift up experience alone. But let me ask you this: Would you rather have a doctor who just graduated from med school with all A’s or a doctor who earned C’s in med school but who has twenty years of experience treating people with your illness? If you lost your child would you rather talk to someone who has read 20 books about what it is like to lose a child or would you rather talk to someone who lost their own child and has lived with that? Do you want to talk to people who’ve read about cancer or do you want to talk to people who’ve lived with it? Do you want to talk to people wwho have read about what it is like to be an alcoholic or do you want to talk to people who’ve been there.

The Pharisees aren’t interested in the healed man’s experience. They don’t care what the mud felt like on his eyes. They don’t care how much faith it must have taken for him to stumble his way to the pool. They don’t care how that first burst of light caused the man to give glory to God. After all, they’re the experts. They’ll tell him what happened. This Jesus guy sinned by healing you on the Sabbath, if you were in fact blind in the first place. That is what happened to you. They don’t want to hear him say “Again, all I know is I was blind, now I see.”

There is only one of us in this room who has a Master of Divinity degree from a seminary. While proper training to be a pastor is important, if you think that makes me more of a Christian because I may know more about Jesus Christ than you do, you are wrong. Because I’ve spent time with you all and you know Jesus Christ. Everyone in this room has experienced the grace of God many times and in many ways over the years. It could have been a moment when you were unusually aware that Christ was with you through the power of the Spirit. It could have been times when you had no idea but you met a child or a person on the street or you spent time with your friends or family and the grace of God shown through those people. It could have been on a mission trip or church camp or over dinner or in worship. You might have had a dream that comforted you. You may have been so surrounded by the people of God during your time of need that you experienced the body of Christ in a very real way. You might have been what seemed like hopelessly lost in sin and experienced the forgiveness of God. Whatever it was, you may not be able to explain it. You may not be able to quote Scriptures about it. You may not know what John Calvin or Dietrich Bonhoeffer said about it. But you know that before God touched you, things were darker than they were afterward. You know that the way you experienced love and peace before is absolutely dull compared to how you experienced love and peace after experiencing Christ’s presence and healing touch on your life. This happens over and over in our lives. After all, if we never experienced the presence of this Christ that we claim to believe in and we claim to worship I don’t imagine we’d keep showing up here week after week.

When we are touched by an experience of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, whether that comes through healing, through deliverance from addiction or trouble, through worship, or through the everyday interactions of people with one another, we carry that experience with us for the rest of our lives. When we experience the touch of God our eyes are opened to the fullness of life that we could not see before. There is such power in experience. You can share all you know about the Bible or all you know about theology or church history or Presbyterian polity but unless you can share your experience with the grace of God then all of that other stuff doesn’t matter. It is great in helping to interpret your experience and to grow spiritually, but it cannot replace experience. Knowing about Jesus Christ is a poor substitute for knowing Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees in this story come to find this out. Jesus goes to find the healed man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The young man does not but comes to believe in Jesus while they are talking. Now not only his eyes, but the eyes of his heart have been opened by Jesus. Then Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Jesus is no longer talking about 20/20 vision here. Those who cannot see what God is up to are going to see it in the work of Jesus, in the experience of his touch. Those who think they know it all and claim to see when what they should be looking upon is right in front of their faces are in trouble. In fact, Jesus concludes by saying that those who claim to know it all are guilty by the very fact that they claim that. They’d be better off if they were clueless. But because they know about God, but don’t know God their sin remains. With their knowledge, they too must be open to experience.

So beneath all the questions we want to ask about this long passage—Why would the disciples think sin caused this man’s blindness? What is Jesus saying about sin here? Why in the world did Jesus use spit and mud on the man’s eyes? Why did Jesus tell him to go wash in a pool? Why do the Pharisees care if Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath?—and beneath all the questions the Pharisees keep asking the healed man and his parents—How’d you receive your sight? What do you say about him? Was he really born blind? How does he see? What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?—there is, at least for today, a meaning that comes not from a question seeking the certainty of knowledge but from an answer celebrating the mystery of experience. “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight…I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

Ash Wednesday Sermon

2008-02-06T13:28:00.000-08:00

"The Most Uncomfortable Day"

Psalm 51 and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Rev. Everett L. Miller

It’s pretty ironic that on a day when we purposely have a cross of ashes marked on our foreheads so that everyone else can see it, our main gospel passage, the words of our Lord Jesus himself are, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Throughout chapter 6 of Matthew, Jesus uses the word “hypocrites” over and over again. Ouch.

When I was in my senior year of seminary I took a course in which we spent an entire semester looking very closely at Jesus’ interactions with other people in the gospels. Once, I wrote a paper about the time when Jesus’ disciples are plucking heads of grain for snacks on the Sabbath and the Pharisees accuse them of breaking the Sabbath commandment. When I received my paper back from my professor he had written a note, I’m not sure if it was a note of appreciation or surprise, saying that through my explanation of the beauty of Sabbath and the possible motives of the Pharisees I had portrayed them as very faithful, pious Jews who were in many ways right in their accusations against Jesus. My professor was used to students railing at the Pharisees as nitpicking legalists. He wasn’t used to students identifying with them.

Later in that same semester I had to write a paper about the actual legal (as opposed to theological) reasons that Jesus was put to death. So I analyzed the accusations made against him by all the different groups. I read over and over the accounts of his makeshift trial before the Sanhedrin and the High Priests. I tried to put myself in Pontius Pilate’s shoes. Then I wrote this long paper about Jesus being killed because the leaders of the Jewish people could not afford for anything to happen that would upset the Romans because then the Romans would come and destroy Jerusalem and kill thousands of Jews, which turned out to be a valid fear as the Romans eventually did do just that about 40 years later. Then I wrote the last sentence of that paper and it was as if it had come from somewhere else, somewhere deeper than usual, because I typed it out and just stared at it with surprise and almost shame. I felt like crying or running away and hiding because I knew that it was true. I had written these words: “I have come to the realization that had I been in their place, I would have killed Jesus too.” Every now and then I pull that paper out of my filing cabinet and just stare at that final sentence.

I am pretty sure that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when they wrote their gospels did not intend that their readers identify with the Pharisees, Chief Priests, and Pontius Pilate. They seemed to have wanted their readers to identify with the band of ragamuffin disciples who loved Jesus but who just couldn’t get it quite right. I believe that is what they intended. But I also believe that they didn’t intend for there still to be people around 2,000 years later reading their gospel with 2,000 years of religion and tradition heaped on top of the faith they were sharing. Those early Christians who had been cast out of the Jewish religion and who had given up the Roman religion, who had no church buildings but were meeting before dawn in the houses of believers or in the catacombs beneath the city streets, probably weren’t what you could call “religious” people. They were simply people of faith in Jesus. That’s how I imagine them anyway.

So although the early Christians had many challenges that we do not have and we can freely worship and we can afford to have beautiful sanctuaries and stained glass windows and our pastors have begun to wear long flowing robes, we have to come to the realization that so often because of the very advantages that we do have, we have perhaps become more like the Pharisees than like the disciples. When we realize this we find that today’s passage from Matthew 6 isn’t there so that we can cheer on Jesus, clapping along and saying, “Oh yeah, Jesus. They are hypocrites. We don’t want to be like them” because Jesus is actually warning his disciples not to be like us. Jesus is warning us not to be like ourselves. I love how it is paraphrased in The Message, “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.”

Maybe I am telling you something that you don’t agree with or maybe something that you know is true but didn’t want to hear, especially by some guy who isn’t even your own pastor. But if Ash Wednesday is worth anything, it gains its worth from being a day of truth telling. I read an article this week by a Methodist pastor who called Ash Wednesday the most uncomfortable day of the church year. He realized this most fully one year after he had gone through the motion of saying, “From dust you have come and to dust you shall return” and marking the cross of ashes on over a hundred foreheads. While he was doing that his wife had gone to the nursery to get their three year old daughter before she came forward for the imposition of ashes. All of a sudden, after all that “religious” repetition he was standing face to face with his precious three year old daughter and he was placing ashes on her forehead and saying, “From dust you have come and to dust you shall return.” That is when the meaning of the action, that we are all mortal and that we are all sinners who must continually run into the embrace of a gracious God, moved from his head and even his lips down to his heart. He looked at his smiling and somewhat confused toddler of a daughter with a cross of soot on the same forehead he kissed every night and he had the same realization I’d had when I realized I would have killed Jesus too: This is uncomfortable but it is the truth.

So if Jesus warns us to, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them,” what are we doing here tonight getting ready to line up to do just that? You may be asking yourself, should I get the ashes or not? Well, that depends on your motives. If we are here because we want people to know that we are so pious that we even showed up at the Ash Wednesday service, or if we are here because we want the ashes on our foreheads so we can go to the grocery store afterwards or drive down to Ponca City to eat at Chili’s and have everyone see how pious we are, then we are here for the wrong reasons and we probably ought to stay seated when the time comes to have the ashes placed on our foreheads. Because, you see, the key to understanding Jesus’ strong statement is the second half of the sentence, “in order to be seen by them.” He doesn’t say that we should never practice our piety in front of others. But he does say we better not do it simply to draw attention to ourselves. If you have come here to have ashes on your head in order to be seen by others you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because even though you might not fully understand what this imposition of ashes thing is all about but you know that you are a sinner in need of God’s help then please by all means be strengthened in your faith by receiving the imposition of the ashes. But as we take part in this religious ritual, let us remember that religion is only valuable insofar as it helps to build our faith and enables us to live it out in the world. Religion for its own sake is the enemy of faith. This is the message of King David in Psalm 51 when he prays, “For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Then just a few verses later, though, when you might expect him to vow to never make a religious sacrifice again he says to God, “You will delight in right sacrifices.”

Jesus teaches something very similar to David’s words in Matthew 5 when he says, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that [someone] has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to [that person]; then come offer your gift.” He doesn’t say that the religious ritual should be totally avoided but he does say that it doesn’t matter what you do with your hands if it isn’t coming from your heart. So in Matthew 6 Jesus doesn’t say don’t give to the poor. Actually he tells at least one person in the gospels to give everything to the poor. But here he says don’t give to the poor so everyone else can see you. He doesn’t say don’t pray. He says don’t pray just so everyone can hear you praying. He doesn’t say don’t ask God for forgiveness. He says don’t pray for forgiveness if you are not willing to forgive. And he doesn’t tell his disciples not to fast. But he does say don’t fast and then go around telling people all about how you are fasting. This is what the hypocrites do, he says.

But although in the gospels Jesus uses the Pharisees, among other groups of people, as examples of religious hypocrites, don’t fool yourselves. The Pharisees do not have a monopoly on participating in religious ritual for the wrong reasons. The Pharisees don’t do anything that we Christians do not do on a regular basis. I don’t think that Jesus was against the Pharisees because they were Pharisees but because some of them, like many of us Christians, were more concerned about appearances and religion than faith in God and love for God and others.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, and Lent is a time of soul searching. It is a time when like a ship that is taking on water we begin to throw overboard anything that is not essential for the journey. It is a time when we realize that returning to dust is as far as I can go on my own. It is, perhaps, the most uncomfortable day of the church year, because it is a day of truth telling, of telling the truth about our own mortality, our own sinfulness, our own religious hypocrisy and showmanship. But the truth must be told before the journey can continue because as our Lord Jesus said himself, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

2008-01-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Wonderful Words of Life"

Matthew 4:1-4

Rev. Everett L. Miller

This being the first Sunday of the New Year, it is a time when a lot of us make resolutions for how we will change our lives for the better this year. Sometimes we are very specific, such as, “I will read one book each month” or “I will workout three times a week,” or “I will stop smoking by February 15.” More often, we make vague commitments to some sort of general improvements in our lives. “I’ll eat healthier this year.” “I’m going to treat people better.” “I will spend more time with my friends.”

If you are anything like me, when the end of the year finally comes and I’ve survived Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, and New Year’s with all of the parties, meetings, and end of the year reports, not to mention the advertising blitz around Christmas, you are so frazzled that all you want to do is to get back to the basics. “I’m going to grow in my faith. I’m going to enjoy my family. I’m going to just work hard for my living.” The New Year is a good time to get back to the basics of life.

When I was thinking about what I would preach on at the beginning of 2008, I thought about this idea of getting back to the basics. Maybe I should preach about the basics of faith, of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, kind of a confirmation class refresher for all of us. So we will get back to the basics, the foundations of faith. Over the next couple of months we will cover such topics as Holy Scripture, Who is God?, and What is the Church? And many more. So let’s get back to the basics.

This past Thursday morning I was all alone in our sanctuary, and I sat down in the first pew. As a break from the busy day, I decided to sit for ten minutes in silence. At first all kinds of thoughts came to mind: the dried poinsettia leaves on the carpet, the e-mail I’d forgotten to send to a colleague. Then after three or four minutes my mind had quieted and I was just sitting there, being. All morning I’d been thinking about how I was so frazzled and stressed. The bad thing about taking vacation is that while you are gone little elves don’t break into your office and do all of your work for you. It is always waiting for you when you get back. So I had four days of work to complete in less than two days. I had presbytery business which I needed to finish and Sunday worship to plan. To top it off my office is so messy and disorganized that I can’t find anything when I need it. Everybody has gone on vacation and come back to that. Surely you’ve had one of those days when you feel like you are being drawn and quartered by all the different directions you are being pulled.

As I was sitting in the silence, the scripture passage I had been reading earlier in the day in preparation for this Sunday’s sermon came to mind, Jesus’ response to Satan’s first temptation in the desert. “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” I said that over and over again as I breathed in and out. Then I realized that I was so frazzled not necessarily because I had a lot to do, but because I was living “on bread alone.” I’d been on vacation for over a week, and I hadn’t kept up on my praying and scripture reading like I should. I rested but I guess you could say that I didn’t recharge. I was just living on the surface, so when I returned to the church office I just kept on going that way. I was living on bread alone, meaning that I was not gaining my strength from God. Do you ever find yourself trying to live on bread alone?

It is inevitable. When I live on bread alone my life gets out of whack. And one of the ways that I have tried to re-center myself when my life gets out of whack, is to hike. I’ve only had the opportunity a couple of times but I like to hike the trails at the Chaplin Nature Center just west of Arkansas City. There is something about being out in the woods all by myself, listening to the wind blowing through the trees, feeling the sun on my face as it peeks through. I feel relaxed and happy. I feel close to the earth and in a way I feel close to God as though God and I have finally been able to slip away from the crowds to take a walk together. There is a sacredness to my hikes. Some of you may have had that type of experience at the beach or in the mountains. But although those hikes tend to help immensely, usually what I need when the edges begin to fray is sitting on a bookshelf collecting dust.

I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas or Angel Falls, but I’ve seen enough of nature to know that a person can come away from the majesty of nature with at least an idea that there must be a God and that this God must be good and wise and powerful. But no matter how sacred my hikes seem to be, they are not enough to give the knowledge of God that is really needed, the knowledge of God that Jesus was referring to when he said that we should live “by every word that comes from God’s mouth.”

A few hundred years ago, the folks who wrote the Westminster Confession called this the “knowledge of God and God’s will that is necessary for salvation.” In other words, the general revelation of God in creation, as beautiful and sacred as it is, or really any aspect of life as a whole, needs to be informed and transformed by something more specific: the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the unique and authoritative witness to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To look only to creation without looking to the scriptures in a quest to learn about and encounter God is living only on the surface. It is like living on bread alone.

If you think that a sunrise over the Smoky Mountains or a sunset in the desert is stunning, try looking at it again after reading in the scriptures that the One who created that sunrise and sunset also created you and loves you. It takes the beauty of that moment to a whole new level. God’s self-revelation in creation may be able to bring us to awe, but it won’t bring us into relationship with our creator. Maybe that is why my hikes seem so sacred, because I look at the woods through the lens of the Bible. I walk through the forest in relationship with the One who formed the universe. I guess that is one way to describe a Christian: someone who walks through the forest of life in relationship with the One who formed the universe. And the way we come into that relationship is through encountering God in the Scriptures. The Bible is not just an accessory to Christian faith. It is absolutely essential.

This Tuesday I am going to start teaching an undergraduate class, Introduction to the New Testament, at Southwestern College, which is a Methodist college in Winfield. The other day I had coffee with head of the Philosophy and Religion Department. I asked if I should assume that all of the students in the class are Christians. He looked at the class roster and said, “I’m pretty sure they are all Christians.” Then just a couple of minutes later I asked for advice in my preparations and teaching. He said, “You should also assume that they no almost nothing about the Bible.” In my mind I thought, “Christians who know almost nothing about the Bible?” After getting over the initial shock I thought about how wonderful it will be to help these students encounter God’s Word and to help them realize that they may have been trying to live on bread alone. Hopefully they will come to see that life can be so much better than that. But surely many of them will come to class on the first day wondering, “Why is the Bible so important?”

As followers of Jesus Christ, we go to the scriptures because the Bible is where we learn of our Lord, of his teachings, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead. It is the Word through which the Holy Spirit teaches us what to believe and how to live. But if any of those students become convinced of scripture’s power to transform I will not be able to take the credit for that. It will have been the Holy Spirit working in their hearts. Those students, just like all of us, must be open to the Holy Spirit working in our lives through scripture, which as I will say on the first day of class, begins with our opening the Bible. The Bible isn’t just important; it is essential for the person of faith. It does not merely inform us like a history book or an encyclopedia, but God uses it to transform us. When we let God in, the scriptures are not just a book but a place where we meet God.

So as Christians, whether we have been a Christian for eighty-five years or if we just came to faith this morning, we can’t neglect the Bible, thinking that hearing the preacher’s sermon on Sunday is enough. As I have found many times, and most recently this past week after I returned from vacation and found myself sitting in that front pew for ten minutes, it is pretty safe to say that the Holy Spirit won’t work through the Bible if it is collecting dust on a shelf all the time. Instead, we must turn to the scriptures, prayerfully asking the Spirit to open us up to God’s transforming work, working through those ancient words to conform us not to the expectations of our culture but to the likeness of Christ Jesus. We do this both as individuals in personal devotional time and in communities like informal study groups or church bible studies or in Sunday School.

This is a new year, a time for getting back to the basics. It is a time to decide that when the world and your busy life tries to keep you living on the surface, that you will respond, both in word and action, with “I do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The New Year is a time to decide that this will be the year when you experience God’s wonderful words of life.

Amen.

2008-01-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

"Deciding to Walk Beside Them"

Matthew 1:18-25

Rev. Everett L. Miller

Preached Following the Burning of the Methodist Church

Maybe someday I will be asked to speak in front of a gathering of Christians from all kinds of different churches: Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and so on. I’ll look out on the faces of all these people who have come together, who are maybe a little suspicious of each other: Catholics at the same tables as Pentecostals, Salvation Army members sharing the salt and pepper shakers with the Greek Orthodox. I will know that they are unsure about what the idea of Christian unity looks like when it is lived out, and I will step up to the podium and begin by telling a story from the past.

I will tell the story of how several years back, in late 2007, the Methodist Church burned down just 100 yards or so down the street from the church where I am pastor. And I will tell the story of how all the churches were the hands of Christ to the people of that congregation. I will tell them about the horrible tragedy and the memories lost and how we mourned with them as best we could, going as far as we could with them in their grief. I will tell that varied group of Christians about how we watched as God did what God does, bringing something good out of something terrible. I will tell them about how we prayed for them and how we were encouraged in our own faith by the strength we saw in the people of the Methodist Church. I’ll tell them about how the Christian community in Newkirk put to the side names like Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ, and Methodist and became the body of Christ. Maybe I will read 1 Corinthians 12:12 and 12:26: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ… If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

As I am telling this story they will think that I made this town up. They will think that there is absolutely no way that Christians in America today could ever put the non-essentials to the side in order to come together to support another group of Christians with a different symbol and a different name. They will think that I am either outright lying or at least exaggerating how it all played out. But a I always do, I will keep talking anyway.

Maybe it will be around Christmastime so I will remind that group of Christians about Joseph. You know, as readers of Matthew we walk in on Joseph as his life is falling apart, as his plans have had to change drastically by no fault of his own. He was betrothed to a woman named Mary, more likely a girl named Mary. To be betrothed was much more binding than our modern engagements. Joseph and Mary were already legally considered husband and wife, although Mary probably continued to live with her family for a year and the marriage was not consummated until after that year. Betrothal was a time of preparation. Joseph was surely preparing a home for his new bride. I’d imagine that Joseph didn’t dream of anything extravagant out of life: a wife, some kids, and their daily bread. It would be a hard life just like everybody else’s around there but they would love God and love each other like good people do. Surely Joseph had dreams of normalcy but was at the same time filled with pride at how his life was about to change.

But then Mary tells him that she is expecting and seeing as how Joseph and Mary have not been together this is of course terrible news to him. Maybe he asked her, “How could you do this to me?” or maybe “Who did this to you?” All of his plans and preparations went down the drain in that moment: the home, the wife, the kids, and the pride. It was all gone. He would become the laughing stock of the town. Mary told him something about an angel and her baby being the Son of God. Good grief, how far will this girl go to deny her sin or to protect the one who has sinned against her?

Matthew tells us that Joseph is a righteous man, a just man, a man of principle. What this really means is that he followed the Law of Moses. But in this particular situation the Law’s prescribed punishment for Mary is death by stoning. Even if the village elders decided not to go that far, she would surely be shamed and her entire family would be ostracized in the community. This is what the letter of the Law says. So what is a righteous man to do? He chooses mercy instead of the letter of the Law. Joseph has found himself in a terrible situation: his betrothed wife is pregnant by someone else, his preparations are worthless, but he will not be spiteful or legalistic. It is easy to see why he is known as Saint Joseph.

With all this weighing on his mind he must have laid in bed for hours. How could this happen to me? Why me? Am I doing the right thing? What now? Then in the early morning hours he finally dozed off. It must have been some dream that he had that night, with a messenger from God telling him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. The messenger tells him that Mary was not lying. She is pregnant, but not by any man, but by the power of the Spirit of God. She will, in fact, give birth to the one who will be called Emmanuel—God with us. It appears that Mary did not have much of a choice in the matter. She had been chosen; she could either accept it begrudgingly or as the most blessed gift ever given by God. After all, in Luke’s gospel the angel tells her: “You will conceive and give birth to a son.” And Joseph is told that she “will bear a son.” God is at work through Mary to bless the world. This is going to happen, the angel says.

But although Mary didn’t really have a choice, Joseph does. He can go ahead with the divorce or he can play his role, however small it might be, in God’s strange and miraculous plan for salvation and redemption. The ball is in Joseph’s court now, so to speak. If he chooses to participate his first action will be to name the child Jesus, the name that is also given by the angel to Mary in Luke. When he wakes up from this dream he has a decision to make. Will he see that what originally was a terrible turn of events is really his opportunity to show his faithfulness to God and his beliefs in God’s promises? Will he see that his life’s purpose is about to rise out of the rubble of his broken dreams and shattered pride?

Anyone who has ever seen a nativity scene knows the choice that Joseph made. Matthew tells us that Joseph took the opportunity he had been given. He decided to face the shame and scorn of his community and take Mary as his wife. And then Matthew says simply, “And he named the child Jesus.” He did it. He made the decision to play his part in God’s work of redemption, even though it was Mary who would carry the burden. He would suffer with her as much as he could and he would rejoice with her when she is honored by giving birth to the embodiment of God’s hope and love for the world.

And after I remind that group of Christians how Joseph walked along with Mary, I’ll tell them about how we at the First Presbyterian Church had a choice to make once. God was going to work whether or not we were on board. God was going to save. God was going to redeem. God was going to give hope. But were we going to join in God’s work even though our part was so small?

I will tell them of how all the congregations in our town watched our Methodist brothers and sisters believe in God’s promises, how we watched their lives’ purposes rise out of the rubble of charred memories and a shattered sense of peace. I will tell that group of how we wanted to help so deeply, and how we were sometimes frustrated by how little tangible we could do to help our brothers and sisters in their time of sadness. I will tell them about how we prayed for them, and how we cried with them in their living rooms, and how we listened to their sacred stories of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. I will tell them how we stood in the margins helping where we could but recognizing that ultimately it was they who have to carry the burden. I will tell them how we suffered with them as much as we could and how we rejoiced with them when out of their tragedy there was a new birth of God’s hope and love for the world right there in our own community.

And I will close by telling them that we said yes to the call because we believe those words of scripture, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ… If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

2007-12-16T11:54:00.000-08:00

"Art Without a Frame"

Matthew 11:2-6

Rev. Everett L. Miller

Note: The illustration in this sermon is based upon the April 8, 2007 Washington Post article, "Pearls Before Breakfast" by Gene Weingarten

On Friday, January 12, 2007 there was a musician playing for tips in the L’Enfant Plaza of the Washington D.C. subway system. He began playing just before 8 o’clock in the morning, during the busy rush hour. Most of the people who were entering the plaza and heading to board the train were government employees. There was also a shoeshine stand, a magazine and newspaper stand, and a machine that sells lottery tickets all in the same area as the musician. At first glance there was nothing out of the ordinary about the situation; street musicians play their guitars or saxophones there all the time. But despite the appearances of there being just one more musician in a long line of musicians in public space amidst the busy-ness of modern life, there was something very extraordinary that was happening that morning. You see, it wasn’t just any street musician.

Joshua Bell is considered one of the most talented classical musicians in the world. He is a violinist who began as a child prodigy. He is now 39 years old. He has played for royalty in Europe. He has performed with the greatest orchestras around the world. He has been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize recognizing him as the greatest classical musician in America. He has played on the soundtracks of movies. The reason that he was in Washington D.C. in the first place was because he was playing at the Library of Congress. It has been said that “he plays like a god.” Interview Magazine said that his playing "does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live." He plays a violin that was handcrafted in the early 1700’s which cost him 3.5 million dollars but is perhaps one of the handful of violins in existence that would be worthy of such an artist. It has been said that at times when he is playing he is able to make his single violin sound like two instruments playing in harmony with one another. He is one of the greatest violinists who have ever walked this earth.

The article in the Washington Post, which I have to say is some of, if not the, best newspaper writing I have ever read, says that “Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.”

So why was he playing for tips in the Washington D.C. subway? Well, the Washington Post came up with an experiment and talked him into participating in it. He dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, took a cab from his hotel to the subway station. And he began to play his 300 year old, 3.5 million dollar violin. He wasn’t just playing any old songs either; he played one of the most difficult pieces for any violinist to play from Bach’s Partita #2 in D Minor. They set up a hidden camera, planting a few Washington Post employees around the area and the experiment began.

The article offers the following as the reason for the experiment: “His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” In other words, would people realize what their ears were hearing and their eyes were seeing? Would people allow the beauty right in front of them to intrude upon their busy lives?

The Washington Post was a little bit worried about how much trouble they might get in when the crowds would begin to form. What if so many people stop to listen and watch that rush hour traffic backs up and people start taking pictures and the crowds get so large in that tight space that tempers flare. There could be some sort of riot. Who knows what could happen?

It turns out that they didn’t need to be worried. In the 43 minutes during which he played the Bach piece twice, sandwiched in the middle with Ave Maria, 1,097 people walked by and almost every single one of them ignored the music altogether. One person even walked by and started to speak louder on her cell phone because of all the racket. A few people dropped some money in. Some people even put in just a penny or two. His total was $32.17. One man stopped and listened for three minutes. At one point in the video it appears that a woman has stopped for a moment to listen and when he finished the piece she immediately starts walking, drops a few coins in his case and says something that sounds like, “That was pretty good.” Repeatedly children would try to stop to listen and they would smile then their parents would grab their hands and hurry them off to wherever they were going. All races acted the same. Men and women acted the same. But the children always tried to stop. They knew something beautiful was happening.

Afterwards Joshua Bell said the most difficult part of the whole experience for him was when he would finish a piece and there would be dead silence. He was used to crowds exploding in applause in those moments. But there was only silence. He said, “When you play for ticket-holders you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence.”

The Post employees in the station stopped a few of the people, telling them they were doing a survey about commuting. Then the Post started calling people and asking them the question, “Was there anything unique about your commute this morning?” They called about 40 people. One man didn’t even realize there had been a musician there. One man could remember all the lottery numbers he picked that morning but could not remember much, if anything, about the violinist. There was one man who enjoys classical music, the one who stopped to listen for three minutes. He couldn’t explain it in technical musical terms but he said, “Whatever it was, it made me feel at peace."

The Washington Post talked to all kinds of experts to get their takes on the results of this experiment. They talked to a classical musician and critic. They spoke with a philosopher and even spoke to the senior curator at the National Gallery of Art. I find his explanation to be the most convincing and interesting. He said the problem was context. You would expect to hear the greatest violinist in the world playing on stage in a huge auditorium with hundreds or thousands of tuxedoed and evening-gowned cultural elites in the audience. You would not expect him to be in a subway station when you were on your way to work. People didn’t notice him there, the curator, said because people didn’t expect him to be there in blue jeans and a T-shirt in a subway station.

The curator gives this example: "Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'" He says that Joshua Bell playing the violin in the subway is like art without a frame. It doesn’t meet expectations so it is not appreciated and even just outright ignored.

It would have been difficult to ignore the voice of John the Baptist when early on in Matthew’s Gospel he did things like call some of the people who came to be baptized a “brood of vipers.” Last week I felt sorry for Lisa when she was liturgist because I got to read a passage about mutual love and hers included these words of John the Baptist: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” It would have also been difficult to ignore John when he said that one was coming after him who “will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” He knew that he was doing what Isaiah had prophesied, “preparing the way for the Lord.” Finally this coming one would bring judgment up John’s own people and separate the righteous from the unrighteous. That is perhaps the frame that he put Jesus in, a Messiah who has come to draw a line in the sand, to burn up the wicked. But after John has been arrested by Herod for both gathering too large of a following and speaking against Herod’s stealing of his brother’s wife, John has received news of what Jesus is doing and it doesn’t seem to fit the frame he had placed around Jesus.

So John's disciples find Jesus and they relay his question to him. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John Calvin thought that John the Baptist was only doing this for his disciples’ benefit because there is no way that he could doubt Jesus’ messiahship. But I can see how John might have been sitting in his jail cell, surely knowing that he is going to be killed sooner or later, and starting to wonder where all the unquenchable fire was. He was getting news that Jesus was healing people, hanging out with outcasts and sinners, feeding hungry people, teaching things like “blessed are the peacemakers.” Where is the unquenchable fire? Maybe Calvin is right, after all he was much smarter than I will ever be, but maybe John’s expectations and Jesus’ reported actions weren’t adding up. Jesus wasn’t meeting expectations.

Although John seems to have expected a spiritual messiah of a sort, most of the Jewish people were almost surely looking for a powerful, military Messiah. And who can blame them? They’d been slaves in Egypt, conquered by Assyria, exiled by Babylon, colonized by Greece, been briefly governed by some of their own people who ended up going corrupt, then they became subjects of the Roman Empire. When your people have been overtaxed, murdered, raped, and your holy temple defiled more than once, who can blame you for looking forward to God sending you someone to get you out of these terrible straights? So they put frames around who they expected to be their Messiah. And in the very century in which Jesus lived there were several pretenders who at least for a time seemed to fit the frame nicely and gained fame as Messiahs until they rose up against Herod or Rome and met their death just like every other freedom fighter against the empire, and really in the same manner that Jesus did, but they did not leave any effects behind, practical, spiritual or otherwise and they certainly didn’t rise from the tomb.

But Jesus’ response, although it is based on several passages from Isaiah, most notably chapters 35 and 61, does not fit within the frames that had been constructed for him. He says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” To us Christians a couple thousand years later all that sounds like stuff the Messiah would be doing. But as one commentator I read this week wrote, “As far as we can tell from the surviving writings of the time, nobody in first-century Judaism expected the Messiah to appear as a healer.”

So like Joshua Bell playing the violin in the Washington D.C. subway and the curator’s hypothetical $5 million dollar work of art hanging on the wall of a restaurant, Jesus was in a manner of speaking, “art without a frame.” And Jesus seems to have a pretty good grasp on this because he follows his list of actions with a beatitude. “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” which sounds a little bit like confident version of Joshua Bell’s self-conscious question, “What if they resent my presence?” In other words, blessed is anyone who does not resent my presence as a work of art without a frame, or at least without the frame that people expected to see me in.

Jesus was almost constantly out of context. You would expect to meet the Messiah of the Jewish Nation perhaps on the back of a horse as he gathers men from the hills and farms to form an army to overthrow the Romans. You might expect to meet the Messiah of the Jewish Nation as a great high priest who could purify the religion and chase out the pagan Gentiles. That is how the prophecies had been interpreted for centuries. And like I said earlier, when your neck is under the boot of the Roman Empire that is who you want and in some cases need—a deliverer. You wouldn’t expect the Messiah of the Jewish Nation to be a homeless itinerant preacher and healer who wasn’t raising an army to kill Roman centurions but instead was healing their dying servants by his word alone. So John’s question is not out of place. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Towards the end of Joshua Bell’s 43 minutes a man who had once aspired to be a classical violinist himself stopped way on the other side of the shoeshine stand to listen to him. The article gives his interview like this: “When he was called later in the day, like everyone else, he was first asked if anything unusual had happened to him on his trip into work. Of the more than 40 people contacted, Picarello was the only one who immediately mentioned the violinist. "There was a musician playing at the top of the escalator at L'Enfant Plaza." Haven't you seen musicians there before? "Not like this one." What do you mean? "This was a superb violinist. I've never heard anyone of that caliber. He was technically proficient, with very good phrasing. He had a good fiddle, too, with a big, lush sound. I walked a distance away, to hear him. I didn't want to be intrusive on his space." Really? "Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day."

And finally, at the very end of his 43 minutes a young woman stood in front of him and could not believe her eyes. Could he really be who I think he is? She had seen Joshua at the Library of Congress a few weeks earlier. When they called her she said, "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"

It’s bad enough for most of us when we go to an art museum and we stand there looking at this huge painting in the expensive frame by the artist who we remember from art history class and we still don’t get it. So it is kind of hard to totally blame the 1,070 people who didn’t even stop to listen to the greatest violinist in the world play for free. But it is still a kind of indictment on our modern lives. But still, some people got it.

That man who leaned against the wall for three minutes and said, “Whatever it was, it made me feel at peace.” He got it. Even though the adults wouldn’t let them stay to listen, the children who kept trying to stop as their parents tugged on them knew something beautiful was happening. They got it. The man who when he was asked, “Haven’t you seen musicians there before” responded, “Yes, but not like this one,” then went on to say, “It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day.” He got it. And finally there is the young woman who had had the privilege of seeing him a few weeks before in context at the Library of Congress so she recognized him and confessed that to him. She got it. Blessed are they who were not offended by Joshua, who did not resent his presence. They were given the gift of the most beautiful music in the world for free. It was being played for all to hear and he was standing there for all to see, but only they had ears to hear and eyes to see what was truly happening right in front of their faces.

Well, even though Jesus seemed out of context, even though he didn’t fit the frame, some people got it. Blessed are they who are not offended by Jesus, who do not resent his presence. They are given the gift of the most beautiful message in the world for free. He spoke his words for all to hear and he performed miracles there for all to see, but only they that had ears to hear and eyes to see what was truly happening right in front of their faces got it. They are the ones who would go out into the world to say something not dissimilar to what that magazine had said about the violinist; he "does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live." Oh but he does so much more. They got it.

In closing let me adapt something said by the British author John Lane in his reaction to the Joshua Bell experiment by offering it also as a response to the gospel of Jesus. “If the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

May we "get it" this Christmas.

2007-11-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

"A Strangely Christian Thing to Do"

Christ the King Sunday

Luke 23:33-43

Rev. Everett L. Miller

It is a strangely Christian thing to do, declaring a day Christ the King Sunday, then celebrating that day by reading the story of his being crucified on a Roman cross. It is ridiculous really. The early Christians knew that much more thoroughly than we do as when Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Here is a peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, rejected by the leaders of his own people, sentenced to death by the local representative of the real king of kings, the Roman emperor Tiberius, and now fastened to a cross between two dying criminals. What kind of king is this? Can you imagine having been among the first generation of Christians trying to explain that to people?
If you had been alive in the year 9 BC, about 40 years before Jesus’ death, and just a few years before his birth, you could have read a proclamation about the Roman emperor at the time, Caesar Augustus, that calls him Savior and god manifest. It also says “Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times, and even the birthday of Caesar Augustus “has been for the whole word the beginning of the good news.” Sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it?

We could have also read an inscription on a statue of Augustus, which read, "The God Augustus, Son of God, Caesar, Absolute Ruler of land and sea, the Benefactor and Savior of the whole cosmos.”

In the ancient Roman world, it would have been quite common to hear the words, “Caesar is Lord” on the lips of most any citizen and many subjected peoples. It was a statement of allegiance to the empire, like a pledge of allegiance to Caesar and to Rome. So to say “Jesus is Lord” was ridiculous, offensive, and an affront to the government, because what you were supposed to say is “Caesar is Lord.” The implication within the confession of faith, “Jesus is Lord,” is that Caesar is not.

In Acts, which was also written by Luke, there is a report of a controversy in the city of Thessalonica. A crowd comes looking for Paul and Silas, but finds only Jason, a local man who had been working with them. Luke writes, “they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: ‘They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus’” (Acts 17:6-8). You can see why so often the early Christians were persecuted and executed at the hands of the government.

Luke was a Gentile living within the Roman Empire writing to people like him, Gentiles living in the Roman Empire. He states, himself, in the introduction to his gospel that he is writing not to convince people to become Christians but to encourage those people who already believed in Jesus so that they “may know the certainty of the things [they] have been taught.” Luke’s readers are people who have already taken the risk of saying, “Jesus is King” or “Jesus is Lord.” Yet, they look outside their windows and all they see is the influence of Caesar and his empire.

Towards the beginning of Luke, the angel of the LORD says to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” Luke is dangerously reminding his readers that it is not the birth of an emperor which is the beginning of the good news, but the birth of Jesus.

At the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, Matthew, Mark, and John all have the crowd yelling, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.” But Luke has them calling out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” It is very important to Luke that the readers of his gospel, which includes those of us on the other side of the world 2,000 years later, get the point that no matter what it looks like outside our windows it is Jesus who is the real king.

So now we come back to Jesus on the cross. In addition to being executed, he is also being tempted one last time. If you recall when he was tempted by Satan in the desert, the last temptation was, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” Now they are saying things like, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen one.” They are saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” Then one of the other men being crucified with Jesus says, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” He is being tempted to prove that he is the King that his disciples claim him to be by saving himself instead of dying on the cross for the salvation of others. They are saying, “If you are the King, then show us some power. Kings don’t die on crosses. Criminals do. What kind of king is this?”

But Jesus is not a king like the kings of this world. He is not the king of the Jews that was expected, coming with violence to overthrow the Romans. He is not a King of Kings like Caesar in his palace in Rome with millions of soldiers at his command. He said it himself, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” and “I am among you as one who serves.” Jesus will not prove his Kingship by saving himself, for that is not the kind of king that he is. And it is a strangely Christian thing to say, but Jesus proves that he is king, by being up there on that cross. Jesus proves his strength through taking on weakness.

But according to Luke (he is the only one who reports this) one of the criminals comes to Jesus’ defense. Luke tells us that one of the criminals had “hurled insults” at Jesus. But the word in Greek actually means “blaspheme,” as in breaking the third commandment, “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.” Luke is saying that to say something against Jesus is to say something against God. So the other suffering criminal, groans out in agony to the other man, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then the man speaks to Jesus, saying something we should all pray every day. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” By saying this to Jesus, this man is professing his faith in Jesus as King and showing that he realizes that Jesus is not the usual kind of king and that the Kingdom Jesus announced is not the usual kind of kingdom. Despite what the leaders of the people, and the Roman soldiers, and the other criminal say, this peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, who is fastened to a cross in between two dying criminals is, in fact, the real king of kings. And Jesus’ last interaction with another person in Luke’s gospel before he dies is to turn to the man and say, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” His last act of ministry is to welcome a criminal into his heavenly kingdom. That is the kind of King that Jesus is, not the kind who will prove his kingship by saving himself, but by saving a man who has been lost every day of his life but this one. This criminal, by losing his life, is gaining it. That is another strangely Christian thing to say.

Claiming that Christ is our king does have implications for eternal life, but it also has implications for the way we live our lives right now. We have to make decisions everyday as to how we will live in culture and with other people. We have to keep reminding ourselves that Christ is King. Culture is not. Christ is King. Addiction is not. Christ is King. My desires are not. Christ is King. Wealth is not. Christ is King. I am not.

Sometimes our affirmation of Christ as King has to do with big, public issues. I recently saw the movie Amazing Grace, which is about the efforts of William Wilberforce to abolish slavery in the British Empire, something he did because he knew that on that issue he could not support the king’s policies on slavery and claim that Christ is King. In Germany during the 1930’s and 40’s Christians like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were adamant that Christ was their King, Hitler was not. Also, it is no accident that the civil rights movement in the American South grew out of churches and was led by a Baptist pastor, people who claim Christ as King. Living in culture and having Christ as king is often difficult. Sometimes we have to make difficult, even dangerous decisions when there is a conflict between what culture tells us to do and what Christ would have us do.

There has been an instance of this quite recently for thousands of Christians here in Oklahoma. Oklahoma House Bill 1804, the new law that cracks down on undocumented immigrants in Oklahoma has caused many Christian churches and individual Christians to ask themselves if they can both follow Christ as King and follow this law. Adding to the fire is the fact that it has also been announced that in the next legislative session there will be an additional bill proposed that would “essentially make it illegal for anyone to help an undocumented person.” Many churches have decided that the answer is that they cannot completely follow this new law and at the same time be able to say in truth that Christ is their King.

Many Christians have signed what is called a “pledge of resistance,” which has been sent to Governor Henry. Interestingly enough, resistance to this law has united Christians from many different denominations in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime. The pledge itself was written by a Quaker and a Nazarene. The Oklahoma Conference of Churches, which is made up of the sixteen Christian denominations including the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Episcopalians has come out in resistance to the law.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City declared in a document sent to the state government: “We stand together, in solidarity, in defiance of this law because of our allegiance to a higher law; the law of love of God and humanity.” The Southern Baptist Convention said: “As Christians, that should be our No. 1 focus -- God first, government second. While we will obey the law to the best of our ability, when people come to our church to worship with us, we are not going to ask for proof of citizenship."

I have never heard of anything uniting Southern Baptists, Catholics, Nazarenes, Presbyterians and many other parts of the body of Christ the way that support for immigrants, documented or undocumented, has united us. And here is why so many churches have come together on this: We all answer the question, “Who is the ultimate authority in your lives?” the same way. The answer is Jesus Christ. We are united because Jesus is Lord, Christ is King, which means that we do everything we can to obey the laws of our land, but if that law would cause us to break the laws of God, we have a decision to make.

Here is why there is a decision to make with this particular issue. Throughout the Old Testament, God said things like this to the people of Israel: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19: 33-34). In addition to this we read in the New Testament Scriptures of Joseph, Mary, and an infant Jesus having to flee Judea, to become immigrants in Egypt. We read of our Lord Jesus reaching out to the Samaritans, who the Jews did not want around. We read of our Lord saying, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” We read of our Lord saying, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared from the creation of the world…I was a stranger and you invited me in…Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me.”

A question that many Christians have been asking themselves and others lately is this: If a family of undocumented immigrants came to Jesus’ door asking for help, would he help them? Well, he healed people on the Sabbath even though the Law said he couldn’t. He reached out to people who were declared unclean, even though the Law said he couldn’t. He reached out to the Samaritans, although the leaders of his people said he couldn’t. Of course he would help them because that is what he came to do, “To preach good news to the poor.” And because that is what he would do, those who have faith in him are to do likewise, because Christ is King. So whether or not you personally agree with the stand all these churches and individual Christians have made, you at least have to admit that they mad this stand because of their belief in Christ as King.

As I said, it is a strangely Christian thing to do, declaring a day to be Christ the King Sunday, then celebrating that day by reading the story of his being crucified on a Roman cross. But, ironically, Luke’s telling of Jesus’ death on the cross helps to answer the question, “What kind of king is this?” He is the king who refuses to save himself to show his authority, but instead he gives his own life for the salvation of others to show his authority. He is the king who refuses to fit the expectations of culture, but instead fits the expectations of God, forgiving his executioners and turning to a dying criminal and assuring him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” So may we be willing to face the same accusations faced by Jason and others in Thessalonica. May there be enough evidence to convict us if we are accused of “saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.’” We can’t expect everybody to understand this. After all, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

May Christ reign as the King of our lives. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

2007-11-18T12:00:00.000-08:00

"Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving"

Psalm 100, Luke 17:11-19

Rev. Everett L. Miller

This past Wednesday, when the wind was fierce and the air was cold I decided to venture out to the church sign to change the message. Since Thanksgiving is this Thursday I wanted to put up a message that has to do with giving thanks to God. So I put on my sweater and grabbed the two boxes of plastic letters and headed out the door. I set the boxes on top of the stone sign and bent down to unlock the sign cover. As I was turning the lock a great gust of wind came up and picked up both boxes and spread hundreds of little white plastic letters all over the sidewalk and throughout the churchyard. As I reached out for them to no avail I’m sure that some very unthankful words came to mind. Then I looked around to make sure no one had witnessed my embarrassing moment and I had to make a decision. Would I pick up all of the letters first, then put the message on the sign, or would I search through the grass for the letters I needed for the message, put it up, then pick up the other letters.

I got down on my hands and knees. For some reason or other I decided to look for the specific letters I needed first. I looked for E’s, G’s, N’s, T’s, and so on, finding some in the grass, some in a pile of leaves, one or two over by the bushes. As I did it I asked the question, “Why did I bring two boxes of plastic letters out here on a windy day?” And feeling somewhat unthankful for the time I was wasting hunting letters like an alphabet Easter egg hunt, I spelled out the message that I had planned to put up in the first place, Psalm 100:4. “Enter God’s Gates with Thanksgiving.”

I locked the sign door back but before I began to pick up the scattered letters I thought about how the choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for me to pick up the pieces in a thankful way. By stopping what I was doing to offer a message of thanksgiving my whole attitude changed. “ENTER GOD’S GATES WITH THANKSGIVING.” How could I spend twenty minutes searching for the letters to spell that out, then turn around and in the next moment not live it out? How beautiful are those words: "Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving."

In today's gospel passage, Jesus has come across ten men who wanted to pick up the pieces of their lives and who probably felt they had no reason to offer thanksgiving. In fact according to Jewish law they could not even enter God’s gates (meaning the temple gates). They were suffering from skin diseases. In those days, if you had almost any skin disease you were considered a leper and unclean until it healed. What it meant to be unclean is that you had to live outside of the camp or town where everybody else lived. You couldn’t touch other people and they couldn’t touch you. Can you imagine the solitude? Can you imagine not being able to touch your husband or wife, your children or grandchildren?

I remember patients when I was a student hospital chaplain who everybody who came into their rooms had to wear a plastic gown, a thick mask, and rubber gloves. It really affected people when they couldn’t touch the skin of their loved one, when they couldn’t kiss each other, when we held hands to pray it wasn’t skin touching skin but rubber glove on rubber glove. Being in that situation made people feel like lepers. And lepers like these ten men who Jesus met that day were even supposed to call out to people if they approached them, “Unclean, Unclean!” so they would know to avoid them. So these unclean outcasts would form colonies and they would call out from far away for people who traveled by to show mercy on them by giving them alms or charity.

But this is no ordinary man that is passing by today. They have heard of him and what he has done for others. So they yell out to him, “Jesus, master, have pity on us!” Anybody else may have given them a few coins, or maybe as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, they may have seen them, then moved to the other side of the road and kept walking. Surely we have all done that at one time or another when a homeless person is on the sidewalk. But Luke tells us that when Jesus saw them he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” He didn’t even say that they were healed, he simply told the ten men to do what the Law said they must do to be declared clean again. So they started heading off to present themselves to the priests. That was a huge act of faith in itself. Their skin still looks the same, yet they believe in Jesus’ power enough that they believe they will be made clean. These ten men with cracking, pimpled, discolored, infected skin, had been cast out from society, could not be close to their families or friends, could not enter the temple in their unclean condition. But today Jesus had come into their lives and he was going to bring them back into the community.

They are walking together, an act of both communal and individual faith, but surely they had questions in their minds. “Am I being a fool?” “What if I show up at the priest and I’m not clean? They’ll throw me out of town again.” “What if the others are made clean but I am not?” Then Luke tells us “as they went, they were cleansed.” They had reached out to Jesus. They had been obedient. They had taken steps of faith. And now they are clean and are included in the community once again. How happy must they have been? They probably took off running toward the temple, with eyes filled with tears and screaming for the first time in years, “Clean! Clean!”

But one of them “when saw he was healed” turned around and started walking the other way, back to where he had met Jesus. The others must have called out, “What are you doing? Do as the master said. Go to your priests and be declared clean.” But he just kept walking, praising God in a loud voice so anybody out there, so the trees and the rocks and the animals could all hear him blessing the name of the LORD. And when he made it back to Jesus “He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” Jesus had told him to go to the priests but he was so filled with joy and praise and the urge to thank Jesus that he had to stop what he was doing, even though it was what he had been told to do by Jesus himself, because his gratitude to God was boiling over. So he fell down at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.

Luke likes to tell stories about people placing themselves at Jesus’ feet, which is a sign of faith and humility and honor. The Gerasene man who had been tormented for years and was living naked in the tombs from whom Jesus cast out demons had clothed himself and sat at Jesus’ feet. Jairus, whose daughter was dying fell at Jesus’ feet and asked for help. When Martha was so busy in the kitchen that day in Bethany, her sister Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet.

And there is the story of the "sinful" woman who placed herself at Jesus' feet while he was reclining at the table of Simon the Pharisee. She began to weep and the tears fell onto his feet, so she wiped them off with her hair then pour perfume on them. Simon can't believe that Jesus is letting this happen. Jesus responds by telling Simon, "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon agreed that it would be the one who had the greater debt. "He who has been forgiven little loves little," Jesus says. Then he turns to the woman, blessing her, "Your sins are forgiven...Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

“He who has been forgiven little loves little.” The leper in today’s passage has no need to be forgiven. He is not a leper because he has sinned, although surely people believed there to be a connection. He was not a “sinner” per se, but he might as well have been. And it gets even worse for him because the next thing we learn about the leper who had been made clean is that he is a Samaritan. Most Jews did not like Samaritans. Actually, they despised them. They saw the Samaritans as mixed-blood, perverters of religion, who were unclean for reasons that I don’t have time to get into now. Jews didn’t even travel through the area of Samaria. It’s a little bit like Israelites and Palestinians these days. But Jesus wasn’t willing to go along with his people and how they viewed the people of Samaria. He only cared how his Father in Heaven viewed them.

Throughout the New Testament we read that “Jesus rebuked his disciples for their hostility to the Samaritans, healed this Samaritan leper, honored a Samaritan for his neighborliness, praised a Samaritan for his gratitude, asked a drink of a Samaritan woman, and preached to the Samaritans. He even challenged his disciples to witness in Samaria.” The Leper was a double outcast, but Jesus did not ask for credentials before he offered him mercy. It was the way of society to hate the Samaritans. But it was the way of Jesus to include them in the Kingdom of God, to treat them as brothers and sisters, and to offer them healing and salvation. And that was most certainly worth going back to give thanks for, so as the other nine lepers continued to walk the other way to do their duty, this man who was an outcast two times over lies at the feet of the Lord.

By the way, have you ever met someone who is duty-bound, but is not joyful or thankful? I can recall muttering under my breath as I raked leaves as a kid. I was performing the duty I had been given by my parents but I don’t remember ever being thankful that I was outside in the cool autumn air, doing my part for our family. I’ve had teachers in my years as a student that I wondered why in the world they ever became a teacher, because it seemed all they were willing to do was to perform their duties by showing up and giving assignments and tests. And I never really noticed how bad it was until I had a poetry professor in college who overflowed with joy and excitement every class and every time I stopped by his office. He loved what he was doing and he was thankful that he got to spend his days opening up the minds of young people to the beauty of language. I’ve met farmers who did it out of duty. “This is what my father did, and his father, and so on so I had to do it.” But then I’ve met farmers who gave thanks and praise to God that they’re days aren’t spent in a cubicle but under the endless blue sky working the land God created.

But an attitude of thanksgiving doesn’t only need to be there in what we do for a living but in everything in our lives. This Samaritan man shows us that the Christian life is more than simply doing what Jesus tells us to do, although that is incredibly important. After all, Jesus does say in John’s gospel, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, that is the one who loves me.” But Jesus certainly didn’t mean that his disciples should just robotically do whatever he tells them. Life in Christ is not a list of rules; it is so much more than that. It is about being so transformed by Jesus’ offer of salvation and God’s grace that we look at life, the good and the bad, the duty and the sacrifice, the sorrowful and the fun, in a totally new way. Being thankful isn’t about being happy all the time, but it is about being grateful to God all the time.

With the healed man at his feet, Jesus looks down and asks, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Actually, something interesting about what Jesus is saying here is that in the Greek the word translated as “made you well” can also be translated as “saved you.” It is the exact same word that is used when Jesus tells the "sinful" woman, "Go, your faith has saved you." It is a word with multiple meanings and it is a different word from that which is used by Luke when he says the ten lepers were cleansed. In the English all we get is “made you well,” but that one Greek word can mean save (as in Christian salvation), save as in rescue, deliver, keep safe, preserve, cure, and finally make well.” Jesus is blessing this man in a different way than the other nine have been blessed. The great preacher Fred Craddock writes of this, “What we have, then, is a story of ten being healed and one being saved.” This man has been made anew and he has gone past that initial act of faith, and just dutiful obedience, to the realization of what James 1:17 says; “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” So he has returned to give thanks to the Lord.

Like almost everyone else in the Bible, we don’t know whatever came of that Samaritan man. But I’d like to think that he went on living his life with that moment at Jesus’ feet in the forefront of his mind and heart. I’d like to think that his choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for him to pick up the pieces of his life in a thankful way. I’d like to think that he lived a life of praise, gratitude, and joy and translated his personal experience with Jesus and his gratitude for God’s grace into years of bettering other people’s lives, while giving thanks to Jesus all the way. I’d like to think that every doorway he walked through and even every tree’s branches he ever passed under were like God’s gates to him and that he entered them with thanksgiving.

So this week, as we pause for a few hours from our busy lives filled with duty, let us keep the story of this healed Samaritan man in the forefront of our minds and hearts. Let us give thanks for this man who stopped just long enough, even while he was finally picking up the pieces of his life, to offer thanks to the Lord. And let us give thanks to our Lord who has offered us the same salvation, the same new life, the same opportunity to live in gratitude and thanksgiving. And may every door we pass through and even every tree’s branches we pass under be as God’s gates to us and may we enter them with thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving. Amen.

2007-11-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

"What is Zacchaeus Seeking?"

Luke 19:1-10

Rev. Everett L. Miller

You may have heard of the book title, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Well, we could probably write a book called Everything I Know about Zacchaeus I Learned in Kindergarten because what most of us know about the man probably comes from the children’s song that starts out, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.” That song gives us the gist of the story. Zacchaeus was short so he climbed up a sycamore tree so that he could see Jesus as he passed through Jericho. When Jesus came to the tree he told Zacchaeus to come down from the tree because Jesus was going to visit his house. The song really does hit the highlights, but if all that we know about this encounter between Zacchaeus and Jesus comes from that great little song, we miss out on the power of this story and it becomes for us just a cute little tale about Jesus being nice to a short guy.

The story of Zacchaeus only takes up 10 verses in Luke’s Gospel and does not appear in any of the other gospels. But we can actually learn quite a bit about the man and the situation he finds himself in from these few verses. The first thing we learn is his name—Zacchaeus. It actually means “innocent,” which is ironic because the next bit of information we get about him is that he is a chief tax collector. If you think the regular tax collectors like Matthew were hated, then imagine how people felt about their bosses, the chief tax collectors. These men would contract directly with the Roman government to collect a certain amount of taxes from their own people. Usually the chief tax collector would pay that year’s full amount to the government before he ever started collecting the taxes. He would then higher underlings, like Matthew for example, to collect the money from the people, but he wouldn’t just recoup the amount that he had paid the Romans. He would hike up the taxes he collected from his own people so he could make a huge profit. If you think the IRS is stealing from you, just be happy we don’t use the Roman system. Chief tax collectors were extremely rich men and they were considered thieves and traitors to their own people. Zacchaeus would also have probably been considered unclean by Jewish law most of the time because of how often he worked directly with the Gentile Romans. Zacchaeus was anything but innocent and he was probably ostracized within his community. His wealth had come with a price.

The next thing we learn is that Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was but there was a crowd gathering in the city of Jericho and he was short so he wasn’t going to be able to see anything when Jesus walked through town. Then we often picture him climbing up a tree. But he did something else first. He took off running. He ran out ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycamore-fig tree, which was extremely common in the Holy Land, with low limbs that produced inferior figs that would only have been eaten by the poor.

That’s not so important, however. But here are a few facts that are: in the extremely formal society of ancient Middle Eastern Judaism it was considered shameful for a man, especially a man of social standing, to run. Kids ran. Men didn’t. Secondly, but in the same vein, it would be shameful for a rich man to climb a tree. Only poor people looking for food would climb a tree. Poor people and kids climbed trees. Grown, rich men didn’t. It may seem cute or goofy to us what Zacchaeus is doing but in his own society he was throwing his inhibitions away, making a fool of himself, and bringing shame on himself and his family. What could have been worth that?

Why did Zacchaeus want to see Jesus? Was he just curious what he looked like? Well, the Greek word for what Zacchaeus was doing was “to seek.” He was seeking to see who Jesus was. But why? It doesn’t make any sense. Zacchaeus, the man who has become rich by exploiting others, is seeking to see the Jesus who earlier in Luke’s Gospel said, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” Zacchaeus is seeking to see Jesus who once told the parable of the rich fool who wound up dead and in trouble with God, saying, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” Zacchaeus is seeking to see Jesus who told the parable of the rich man who goes to hell and the poor man who goes to heaven. Zacchaeus is seeking to see the same Jesus who just a chapter earlier told a rich man to sell everything he owned and give the money to the poor, then when the man refused told his disciples that “it will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” It seems that Jesus is the last person who Zacchaeus should be seeking. So something must be going on within Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus must have also heard that Jesus had been called a friend of tax collectors and “sinners”. He must have heard what chapter 15 tells us, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” He must have heard that Jesus had told a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector, in which the Pharisee brags to God and the tax collector says, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” then Jesus says it is the tax collector who went home justified instead of the Pharisee. And he must have also heard that after Jesus said what he did about how difficult it would be for a rich man to enter heaven, his disciples asked him, “Who can be saved?” And Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

It must have seemed impossible to Zacchaeus that he could ever be saved from his life of dishonest wealth and his being ostracized from his community. He was surely left out of society, looked down upon. People talked behind his back. His kids probably got beat up because he was their dad. He was branded a sinner and everybody loved to grumble against him. It seems that his own people didn’t even consider him a Jew anymore. He wasn’t a son of Abraham to them. Everybody loved to hate him. Everybody offered him advice about what he could do to make life better for everybody else, like take a long hike off a short pier. But I think it is a pretty safe bet that nobody ever offered Zacchaeus what he really needed: FORGIVENESS--an OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE--and SALVATION, which is always wrapped up with forgiveness and the opportunity to change.

Zacchaeus must have heard that Jesus once said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” So he is seeking to see the one who said, “everyone who seeks finds.” Zacchaeus is seeking forgiveness. Zacchaeus “sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, because he was small of stature. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way.” He was willing to lose any tiny little bit of respect that other people might have had for him in order to gain what he truly needed. He was willing to let it all go just for a glimpse of the one who proclaimed God’s love and forgiveness, even for chief tax collectors, especially for chief tax collectors.

He must have been terribly surprised when Jesus and his group of followers approached his tree and Jesus looked up at him and calling him by name although they had never met, said, “Zaccheus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Then the NIV tells us “he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.” But “welcomed him gladly” doesn’t really give us the power of the word in the Greek. It means “rejoice.” Here in Luke’s gospel it is the word that Gabriel uses when he tells Mary how she should react to the news that she will bear the Savior of the world in her womb. This is the word that is used to describe the reaction of the shepherd who finds his one lost sheep. And this word is the reaction of the father who receives his prodigal son back after he thought he’d lost him forever.

This isn’t just saying, “Sure, Jesus, come on over. I’m glad you’re here.” This is rejoicing because what you have found is so much more magnificent than what you were seeking. This is rejoicing because you are an outcast and you are alone and you are in need of forgiveness and you are in need of an opportunity to change and you need to be saved from all kinds of things and you’ve made a fool out of yourself hiking up your tunic and running down the road and climbing a tree and Jesus, who you were hoping to catch a glimpse of, knows you and wants to come break bread with you. This is rejoicing. So Zacchaeus hopped out of the tree and rejoiced because Jesus is coming to his house for lunch!

So the crowd sees Jesus walk off with Zacchaeus and rolls their eyes and sticks their noses up and huffs and puffs, “[Jesus] has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” Of course Zacchaeus would have expected that, but who cares, Jesus isn’t sitting down to sandwiches at anybody else’s house. And Jesus was surely used to it by now. He’d been hanging out with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners of all kinds for quite some time. And all this that is going on, the seeking and the finding, the fact that Jesus knew his name and was giving Zacchaeus the opportunities he so sorely needed causes such a change in Zacchaeus that he stands up and tells Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

What a change! John the Baptist had once talked about bearing fruits worthy of repentance. James would later write, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” Jesus talked a lot about repenting, which means changing the way you think and live. Jesus’ acceptance of Zacchaeus has inspired such a change in Zacchaeus that he is standing up, possibly in the middle of dinner, and repenting. The Zacchaeus who cheated people and who didn’t give to help the poor, that man is dead. From now on he doesn’t want to hold on to money for himself but to give as freely as he has received. Zacchaeus wants to change his life but no one would give him the chance. It was like he had been on an island surrounded by burned bridges, and Jesus was the only one willing make the swim. Jesus had once said, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” Zacchaeus had gained a lot, but he had forfeited his very self. But even if the whole city of Jericho had given up on Zacchaeus, Jesus hadn’t.

So Jesus replies, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.” Jesus has given Zacchaeus his identity back and re-included him in God’s covenant community of faith. It doesn’t matter if everybody else in town looks down on Zacchaeus and says he’s such a traitor, that he’s not even a Jew, not even a son of Abraham, because Jesus says he is and that is what matters. We don’t know exactly what Jesus means by salvation here. We are not told if Zacchaeus has made a profession of faith in Jesus. We are not told if he wants to join up with the disciples. But what we do know is that whatever happened in Zacchaeus was so powerful that Jesus sensed that and that Jesus proclaimed that salvation had come to Zacchaeus and his family because of what had happened that day with all the running and tree climbing and rejoicing and repenting.

And here it gets even more interesting. Jesus says, “For the Son of Man (by which he is referring to himself) came to seek and to save what was lost.” I thought it was Zacchaeus who was seeking to see Jesus, not the other way around. And Zacchaeus was certainly seeking Jesus because Zacchaeus was lost and he thought Jesus might be the one in whom he would be found. But Zacchaeus wasn’t the only one who was seeking someone that day. Jesus was seeking for him as well. In fact, Jesus says that is why he came to earth, to Israel, to Jericho, to Zacchaeus, a grown man in a tree. He came to seek and to save the lost. So Zacchaeus may have been a wee little man and a wee little man was he, but he was also lost and he knew it, but so did Jesus. The world wouldn’t give Zacchaeus another chance but Jesus would, because Jesus is the seeker and the savior of the lost.

And here is the best news of it all: that is just as true today as it was then. If you are lost, if the world has given up on you, if you have gained much but forfeited your very self, if what you seek is forgiveness, if what you seek is the opportunity to change, if what you seek is salvation, seek Jesus. He has promised that if you seek him, you will find him, because although you might think you are the only one who is seeking for something, for someone, he is seeking for you too. Like a miraculous birth, like a lost sheep found, like a long lost child returned, that is worth rejoicing over. Rejoice, for Jesus came to seek and to save what was lost. Praise God.

2007-10-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

"We are All Beggars"

Luke 18:9-14, 2 Timothy 4:1-8

Rev. Everett L. Miller

The end is near for Paul. It seems that he has been sentenced to death or he expects to be soon, so he is writing to the one he has called his spiritual son, Timothy. Some scholars say that Paul did not write this letter, for one reason because it does not make the same type of theological points that his letters usually do. Those who say he did write it make the point that he was near death when he wrote it so he was not so much concerned with writing a theological treatise as he was with encouraging Timothy and coming to terms with his own impending death.

You all know that my Granny died a little over two years ago. Well, because she had donated her body for medical research, we just received her ashes about two weeks ago. Last Saturday a bunch of us met outside of Hunter, Oklahoma, on the old farm place and spread her ashes in an old orchard where she used to bird-watch. This got me to thinking about how much I miss her and how my Granny was one of the smartest and most philosophical people I’ve ever known. She was also never short of advice. But the last few times I saw her before she died, and I am convinced she sensed the end was coming a couple of months before it happened, she gave me a generous gift of money for Danielle and me, she insisted that I borrow an incredibly ugly and feminine fleece jacket because it was a cold morning, she told me she was proud of me, and she stood at the door and waved as I pulled out of the parking spot. She did not get philosophical. She simply did what had been most important to her; she did her best to use her meager resources to provide for her grandkids, to protect me from the cold even though I was 26 years old, and she encouraged me. This memory gives me perspective on what really matters in life.

Today is Reformation Sunday, celebrating the fact that on October 31, 1517, a German Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door. That was only the beginning, however. Martin Luther wrote volume after volume of theological works. He was one of the bravest and most talented thinkers in history. He is a giant among the framers of modern Christianity and Western Civilization as a whole, but the night he died he took a piece of paper and scribbled some words on it, the last words being: “We are all beggars, this is true.” They found it on his nightstand after he had died. With all of that important theology and doctrine within him, what was most important to him at the end was the fact that we are all beggars of God’s mercy and forgiveness, as well as the mercy and forgiveness of others. We are all, ultimately dependent on grace. Luther’s final words also help to put life in proper perspective.

Today's lectionary passage from Luke’s gospel tells us that one day Jesus was talking to some people who were too confident of themselves and looked down on others. He told them a parable of 2 men who went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, who everyone would assume was righteous; the other was a tax collector who everyone would have assumed was a scoundrel and sinner. But the Pharisee prayed these words: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a 10th of all I get.” Then the tax collector bows his head, beats his chest and says—“God, have mercy on me—a sinner.”

Here is how Jesus sums it up. “I tell you this man, rather than the other went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus does not say that the Pharisee would have been better off as a robber, evildoer, or adulterer or that he shouldn’t fast or give his ten percent tithe of his income. But this parable is about proper perspective, which Jesus’ story shows is similar to Luther’s last words. “We are all beggars. This is true.” The Tax Collector understands that; the Pharisee does not.

So when Paul senses that his fight is almost over, that his race is nearly finished, it is not more doctrine that is needed, as important as it is, but proper perspective that he offers Timothy. And his proper perspective is this: don’t let what other people are doing deter you from doing what God has called you to do. Other people may drift away to versions of the gospel that are really just what is easy and what they want to hear. But as for you, Timothy, continue preaching the Word, keep your head, be willing to endure hardship, and keep bringing others to faith in Christ.

There is no great treatise on justification and sanctification, no long meditations on the end times. Paul simply lays things out for Timothy. Paul only has time for what really matters; death is near. He is “already being poured out like a drink offering.” He says this to allude to the fact that Jewish priests, when they are performing a sacrifice at the temple, would pour out a cup of wine on the altar to complete the sacrifice. Paul says he is like that wine being poured on the altar signifying the completion of the sacrifice that has been his life since the risen Jesus appeared to him some 30 years earlier.

In 2 Corinthians he says, “I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.”

He’d traveled all over the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean, and he may have even been as far west as Spain. All of those sacrifices in his life for the gospel and as he nears the end it comes down to this: encouragement for Timothy and this statement, “There is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award me on that day—and not only me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” There is no bragging about where he had been and what he had done. He doesn’t even call himself righteous; it is the Lord who is righteous and who can award the crown of righteousness. Paul even makes the point of saying that this isn’t something special for him but for everyone who has faith in Jesus.

We are all ultimately dependent on God’s grace, on God’s mercy and forgiveness. We are all beggars, each and every one of us. This is proper perspective. Isn’t that so much of what faith in God and living as a disciple of Jesus Christ is about: having proper perspective, knowing that we need God and we need others, knowing that we are in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and in turn others are in need of our mercy and forgiveness. Isn’t so much of faith knowing that we are all beggars before God, like that tax collector beating his breast and beseeching, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” like Martin Luther on his death bed, like Paul who looks forward to his crown of righteousness not because he is righteous but because he has faith in Jesus and it is Jesus who is righteous.

It has been said that sharing your faith in Christ with others is really just one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread. We are all beggars and it is Jesus who is the bread of mercy and forgiveness, for which we all hunger. That is why the Lord’s Supper is so extremely important to Sunday worship, because it acts out this truth. To know that you are reliant upon God’s grace and to put your faith in the one who embodies that grace, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to re-orient everything in your life in light of that, now that is proper perspective.

Preached @ Southwestern College, Winfield, KS

2007-10-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

"Sweeter than Honey to My Mouth"

Psalm 119:97-104

Rev. Everett L. Miller

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, I discovered a book that made something magical happen between the words on the page and the imagination within me. It was the book that unlocked my imagination. I assume that I bought it at the much anticipated Scholastic Book Fair. Do you remember the Scholastic Book Fairs in elementary school? They would wheel all of those shiny metal bookshelves into the library and form them into a semi-circle and they’d set out the racks of bookmarks with tassels and pictures of kittens or racecars on them. Then each class would get a turn to walk through to look at the books about sports, exotic animals and kid detectives like Encyclopedia Brown. This was before there were Barnes and Nobles and Borders everywhere and before you could just get on the Internet and have a book over-nighted to you from Amazon.Com.

This particular time I picked out a book called A Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop. On the cover was an illustration of a young boy the same age as me in front of a miniature castle and holding a little figure of a knight as though it was alive. I made the purchase with my hard earned allowance money and began to read it that night. When I would have usually been outside playing basketball or football with other neighborhood kids I was sitting on the top bunk in my room reading this amazing book in which a little boy named William receives an old play castle from his British nanny who is getting ready to move away. The castle comes with only one figure, a knight. At first he is disappointed with only having one figure but then he opens the box holding it and finds that the little knight is alive. It was kind of The Indian in the Cupboard meets The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I don’t have time to tell you any more of the plot but this book convinced me that two worlds, the world of William and the world of the castle and the knight, can overlap. It opened my mind to think that just maybe there is something more magical and alive to those things which we might otherwise look at as being inconsequential. As I stay up late, under my covers reading that book with a flashlight, arguing with my stepbrother on the bottom bunk who kept telling me to shut it off and go to sleep, the relationship between words and imagination was born for me. Words came to life.

Later in life I discovered another book that did much the same thing for me, but on a grander scale, a life-transforming scale. I bought my first very own Bible when I was sixteen. Well, after I made that purchase I sat for what seemed like hours but may have only been minutes reading the Scriptures, reading the stories of Jesus, reading of the children of Israel, and the beautiful poetry of the Psalms, and even the strange visions of Revelation. And I remember it like it was the beginning of a relationship. I didn’t know if I liked it or not. Sometimes I wanted to sleep with it in my arms and at other times I wanted to throw it out the back door. I didn’t understand it but at the same time I wanted to learn everything there was to know about it. And at first maybe it was just words on a page but thirteen years later I can look back on it and see that one of the things that was happening in me that I couldn’t understand was that the relationship between holy words and a holy imagination was being born within me. Words were coming to life and this book started to convince me that two worlds, the world of my everyday existence and the world of God’s dream for creation can overlap. It opened my mind to think that just maybe there is something more mysterious, delightful and alive to those things which we might otherwise look at as being inconsequential. I was, in a manner of speaking, falling in love.

In Psalm 119, the poet declares, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.” This isn’t like, “I love pepperoni pizza” or “I love watching My Name is Earl on Thursdays.” The Hebrew word used here for love is the same word that is used over and over again in the Song of Solomon, as in “Have you seen the one my heart loves?” This is true love, not just finding it interesting, not just memorizing it so you can regurgitate it later, this is being in love with the law of God, being in love with the Scriptures in a similar way to the way you love another person. “Oh, how I love your law.” How can this be?

When I was a senior at Oklahoma State University, I started to hang around with a cute freshman girl. We sort of dated and sort of didn’t. We were friends, then we were dating, then we hated each other, then we were friends, then we were dating, and so on. Maybe you can relate. I was about to graduate from college and she was just getting started so there was no way in the world that I was going to let this get serious and to fall in love with her. But then after I had done some really stupid stuff and almost lost her then something started to change. I stopped imagining what life might be like if I was to graduate and move off by myself to some big city and pursue a career in writing and I started to imagine what life might be like with both of us in the picture. When I began to fall in love with this girl who became my wife I knew that things had changed from interest or even infatuation to true love when I started to imagine our life together and I thought about it what seemed like all day long and it hurt when I wasn’t with her. In fact it still does. This is the kind of imagination that doesn’t just take place in your mind, but also takes place in your heart, your soul, that deep down core of who you are. This is where imagination and love intertwine. And the poet proclaims, “Oh, how I love your law!”

Do you think of love and imagination when you think of the Bible? Is it just words on the page like an encyclopedia? Is it just a bunch of hard names to pronounce and terrible stories of violence and silly stories of miracles and lists of things you can’t do because life might be too fun if you did them? If that is the case for you, I ask you to pray to God that your imagination might be opened.

In fact, I want us to pray for that right now. Repeat after me:

Loving God, explode my imagination with your love.

Explode my imagination with your Spirit.

Explode my imagination with your Word.

Amen.

When you are open to the working of God in your life, the Scriptures can begin to open up your imagination and an entirely new reality breaks in on you.

You begin to imagine an existence in which there is a creator God who not only formed everything in creation but also loves you and everybody else. You begin to imagine an existence in which in some strange, mysterious, and holy way God came to walk among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. You begin to imagine an existence in which a Holy Spirit from God begins to tear down walls between people. You begin to imagine an existence that is in turmoil but is not hopeless, instead it is on its way to being made whole again and that you get to participate in it by loving others and the world through acts of justice, kindness, and mercy. You begin to imagine an existence, your personal existence, that matters in the cosmic scheme of things.

And you know what happens when you start to really imagine these things? You start to notice that something has changed from interest or even infatuation to true love when you start to imagine a life together with God and you think about it what seems like all day long and it hurts when you are not walking with God. This is the kind of imagination that doesn’t just take place in your mind, but also takes place in your heart, your soul, that deep down core of who you are. This is where imagination and love intertwine. And you find that you are falling in love with God through falling in love with the Scriptures and you just might burst out with some ridiculous words like, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.”

And as you fall in love with God through falling in love with God’s Word you begin to see that the world of your everyday existence and the world of God’s dream for creation begin to overlap.

And you find that you begin to become what Paul tells Timothy is being “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

And you see that the Bible isn’t there to simply answer your questions, but instead it questions you. It might ask you:

Are you willing to imagine the way that God wants things to be and are you willing to bring that imagination into being with the help of God’s Spirit?

Are you willing to stop loving stuff and start loving your God and the people God created and the creation God formed as an artist?

Are you willing to be “thoroughly equipped for every good work?”

Are you willing to have your imagination explode, to live beyond your imagination, and to have your life transformed?

Are you willing to fall in love with God?

And you thought it was just words on a page!

And the poet declares, “O how I love your law… Your words are sweet to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” Amen.

2007-10-14T13:52:00.000-07:00

"Set an Example: A Confirmation Sermon"

1 Timothy 4:12

Rev. Everett L. Miller

When I was sixteen I used money from my summer job at the grain elevators in Enid to go to Ruth’s Christian Bookstore in the Oakwood Mall to buy my first very own Bible. And one of the first verses that I highlighted was 1 Timothy 4:12—“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.” That was a very important bit of encouragement for a sixteen year old who had just made a profession of faith. It is also a wonderful bit of encouragement for the two thirteen year olds who are making their profession of faith today. And it is still very important to me at the age of twenty-nine because although our confirmands may think that I am old as dirt, in the vocation I have chosen, I feel that sometimes I am looked down on because I am young (relatively speaking). I would imagine, though, that we could replace the word “young” with a lot of other adjectives and this verse would still make sense. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are “older,” because you are “different in some other way,” "because you can't afford expensive clothes," just go about your business of being a faithful example for others.

But today we are going to talk specifically about young people, and I think if we were all honest with ourselves we would admit that at least from time to time we make the mistake of looking down on people simply because they are young. "Oh, that’s just what teenagers are like. That’s just a typical teenage point of view." We may assume the only subjects they care about are clothes, sports, video games, and the opposite sex. "Someday they’ll grow up," we say. We are sometimes too hard on them (and sometimes too easy on them). But the truth of the matter is that it is often difficult to be a teenager and it is just as often difficult to raise a teenager. And I don’t know if you have thought about this at all but it can also be difficult to be a church family to teenagers, trying to keep them interested in their spirituality, trying to relate to them when we live in a different world than they do.

Being young in 2007 is not the same as it was for many of you who grew up in different eras, not even in this little town. I was thirteen in 1991 and it may not seem that long ago to us but think about this: I had never heard of the Internet and only millionaires had wireless phones. The world of the teenager is much different now than it was even for me. It is probably more difficult to be young these days even though life may seem easier with the Internet, satellite TV, video games, etc.

Often both parents work. All that Internet, TV, and video games comes with all kinds of images of sex, and much worse than that—violence. Girls are pressured to be dangerously thin and willing to do whatever will get a boy to like them. Boys are pressured to be tough, maybe even violent, and taught to treat girls as conquests. You have to wear certain clothes or play a certain sport. You’re pressured to drink and smoke and try drugs at younger ages. Reality television teaches you to succeed no matter who you have to deceive or hurt. I would venture to say that never has it been as important and at the same time as difficult to be a teenager who cares about faith and lives a life of faithfulness. Also, it has probably never been as difficult for a teenager to enjoy spending time with their family and to actually enjoy participating in the life of a faith community.

There are so many obstacles standing between today’s teenagers and having a living, strong faith in Jesus Christ. For the most part it is our very own American culture that erects the biggest wall between a young person’s heart and God. When I was in seminary I took a class in youth ministry in which we did a great deal of research into the motives behind much of our modern American way of life. This is what we found in a huge number of sources: The companies that make TV shows, clothes and music for young people want to separate teenagers from their families, from their church families, and from their local community. They want teenagers to only hang out with kids their own age and they want them to all want to look alike and act alike. They want thirteen year olds in Newkirk to be just like thirteen year olds in New York and Seattle and Des Moines, Iowa and Naples, Florida. They want our confirmands to be just like everybody else because if they can get all the thirteen year olds to want to be just like each other then they can sell them what they need to achieve that and they make tons of money. Who cares if the teenageers lose any sense of uniqueness? Who cares if they start to think of their parents and family as simply getting in the way? Who cares if they don’t have any sort of faith and hope? The companies don’t care. But God cares. And those of us in this congregation better care.

Today our confirmands are professing their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and in doing that they are telling everyone here that they are Christians. In days past that may not have been that big of a deal, but these days for a young person to say that, mean it, and to live it out is an extraordinarily counter-cultural thing to do. When we become professing Christians, if we take it seriously, we often find that we are at odds with our own culture. We find that we have to fight the temptation to buy more and more stuff, because now that we are Christians we know that our value lies with God not in how much fun junk we can accumulate. We find that now that we are Christians we can’t put up with racism or sexism because we now know that we are all created in God’s image and loved equally by God. We find that now that we are Christians that it does matter how we treat the people that nobody else seems to like because we now know that Jesus came to the poor, the weak, and the outcast and sends us to those same people. We find that now that we are Christians we cannot give into the idea that what we really need to do with our lives is to make a bunch of money and get famous because we now know that God calls us to a ministry of some sort. And we find that now that we are Christians we cannot allow ourselves to give into our culture that says that Sunday is just like any other day, because we now know that Christ was resurrected on Sunday and it is a day of worship, of devotion, and rest and that is all.

When we are Christians, younger or older, because of our faith in Jesus Christ we have to stand up to the destructive parts of our own culture. And Paul’s words to Timothy speak to this fact. Although Paul knew nothing of MTV, Myspace, XBOX 360, or I-phones, his advice to Timothy rings true with young people (and all of us) today. He begins, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young.” Youth and the energy and creativity that come with it are gifts. But on the other side of this, you can’t use your youth as an excuse either. As of today our confirmands are full members of this congregation, which means that they now have as much responsibility and the same vote as a member who is 40 or 60 or 80 years old.

Paul’s words could also be addressed to the rest of us—Don’t look down our confirmands because they are young. Just don’t do it. They can do just as much wonderful work for God’s kingdom as anyone else in this room or anyone else in the worldwide church. They are beginning the journey of faith and that is holy business. We cannot look at them and think they are just silly teenagers and what could they know. God just might work through these young people to inspire the rest of us to have a more vital and joyous faith. God just might choose to challenge the rest of us through their examples.

Paul tells Timothy that instead of letting other people look down on him because he is young, he should actually set an example for everyone else by how he lives his life. “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.” People should be able to listen to Timothy speak and know that he believes in Jesus Christ. Can people listen to us talking and know that we have faith and peace and joy from God? People should be able to watch Timothy live his life and know that he is a disciple of Jesus. What do our lifestyles tell about us? Are we generous? Do we refrain from judging others? Do we worship and study and pray? Then Paul tells Timothy that people should be able to see him loving other people and God. People should look at the way he interacts with other people and know that there is something different about him, that he is more loving than he would be if he wasn’t a Christian. Paul tells Timothy that his faith should shine through in all that he does. And finally, Paul tells Timothy to stay pure—meaning sexual purity. Don’t give into that temptation, Paul tells Timothy.

We should all strive to live into this level of faith and character, but on this Confirmation Sunday I especially challenge our confirmands to consider this form of lifestyle which they are putting on today. May everyone at school listen to you speak and know that you believe in Jesus Christ. May everyone watch your lifestyle and know that you believe in Jesus Christ. May everyone see how you love other people, especially those who are rejected by others, and know that you believe in Jesus Christ. May everyone be able to tell that although your faith may be new to you that you are serious about your faith in Jesus Christ and that it makes a difference in your life and gives you joy and hope. And may everyone be able to tell by how you show respect for the opposite sex and by how you respect your own body and the bodies of others that you believe in Jesus Christ.

Let me say this just to our confirmands (although it goes for all of us): both of you are made in the image of God. I know that you don’t really know exactly what that means. That’s okay because none of us really knows exactly what that means. But it means at least these things—you are beautiful inside and out, you are loved by God more than you can ever imagine, you have the capacity for wonderful imagination and creativity, and you have the urge to love other people. You are not just future adults. You are God’s beloved children right now at the age of 13. And that is who you are supposed to be—a 13 year old boy and a 13 year old girl. You are two 13 year old disciples of Jesus Christ. You are not just called to do something great someday. You are called to do great things now.

Don’t just be consumers. Change the world by embodying Christ’s love. Change the world by being peacemakers. Change the world by helping others to come to relationship with God. Change the world. Going to church on Sundays will not cut it by itself. Confirmation is not a graduation or an ending. Confirmation is just the very beginning of your journey of faith. Sunday School and worship attendance is extremely important, however. When you are confirmed, you promise that you will be an active part of this congregation. If you decide in a year or two that you are too busy or too cool to come to church any more you will have broken that promise and as long as I’m here, I will call you on that because we as disciples of Jesus Christ are to be people who keep our promises to God and to each other.

Set an example for the rest of us in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. Set an example for the rest of us by inviting people to come to Sunday school and worship with you. Set an example for the rest of us by having new and creative ideas for worship and ministry and acting upon them. Set an example for the rest of us by falling in love with God through falling in love with the Scriptures. Set an example for the rest of us by rejecting racism and sexism, by living in a manner that reminds all of us that we belong to God.

Today is a joyous day in heaven and on earth. Two young people will declare their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Two young people will take on more responsibility in this community of faith. Two young people who were baptized as young children are taking the faith of their parents and of this congregation and making it their own. Two young people are beginning the journey of walking the way with Jesus. And to our confirmands: as you walk this way with the rest of us, “Don’t let [any of us] look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

2007-10-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

"The Best Christian Education in the World"

2 Timothy 1:1-7

Rev. Everett L. Miller

I’ve told you before that for many years of my childhood my family attended a great church called Yeaman’s Park Presbyterian Church in Hanahan, South Carolina. When all of us kids were at home my parents were very adamant about the family attending Sunday School and worship. I am glad that my parents made a point of doing that, as I later looked back on that congregation and remembered that the pastor had tried to help our family through some very difficult times. The memory of his witness helped me make my decision to become a pastor. But there was quite a disconnect between what we did on Sunday mornings and what we did as a family the rest of the week. We may have said grace; I don’t remember. But never did we discuss what we learned on Sunday morning. Never did we talk about faith. Never did we crack open a Bible. As a child growing up in the church I don’t think that I ever actually owned a Bible. If I did, I certainly didn’t keep it in my room. I cannot venture to say what was really taking place in my parents' hearts in those years but looking back on it I think we probably went to church on Sunday because that’s what respectable families do on Sunday in South Carolina. But faith never really came home with us.

One of my professors in seminary once told our class that everyone wants for the church to be like a big family, but Christians often forget that the family should also be like a little church. The best Christian Education in the world, he said, takes place not in Sunday School but at home. Faith has to come home with us, he said.

A long time ago, a very important prophet by the name of Moses had a habit of saying similar things:

"Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them." (Deut. 4:9)

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." (Deut. 6:4)

The great Apostle Peter, on the very day that the Holy Spirit came down as though it was tongues of fire, also said something similar:

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call. (Acts 2:38-39)

And finally, in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul commands, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Faith has to come home with us. After all, as we will see from Paul’s words to Timothy, our faith does not live at 201 South Walnut; it lives within us.

Paul begins his letter to the young pastor Timothy by building him up. He calls him “my beloved child,” which must be a wonderful thing to hear from your spiritual teacher. Paul recalls a time when Timothy broke down in tears, maybe when Paul and Timothy parted ways. He tells Timothy that when he sees him again he will be filled with joy. Then he talks about Timothy’s faith. Paul could have said, “I am reminded of your sincere faith that lives in you.” But he didn’t; he chose to trace that faith back through the channels through which it came, like tracing a river back to its tributaries. “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” This faith came from grandma, from mom, and now lives within Timothy. Who knows why it doesn’t mention dad and grandpa? Maybe they weren’t around. Maybe they never became believers. Who knows? But what we do know is that if it wasn’t for the fact that Lois and Eunice wouldn’t let their faith stay on Sunday mornings or where they met for worship, if it wasn’t for the fact that Lois and Eunice brought their faith home with them and shared it with little Timmy, then that faith may have never come to live within Timothy. It appears that the home, which Lois and Eunice provided for the family, was like a little church.

Lois and Eunice must have known that if we do not raise our children to love the Lord, to study the scriptures, to spend time in prayer, then we should not be surprised if when they grow up they want nothing to do with faith or the church, because it will have no value for them. Granny Lois and Momma Eunice must have known this and they did the holy work of passing on the faith. Paul later had even more compliments for Timothy's family: "But as for you [Timothy], continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have know the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation thorugh faith in Christ Jesus." Faith came home with them and the results are wonderful.

You might want to say, “Well Everett, your parents didn’t bring faith home for you and look, you ended up as a pastor. So it’s not that important.” Although now is not the time for my full testimony about what brought me to my knees and what brought me to the realization that I just can’t go on living without Jesus Christ in my life, but I will tell you enough so you can get the point that it does matter if faith comes home.

During my four years of high school I lived with a different family each year. Before entering my senior year in high school I was once again looking for a place to live. I didn’t feel like I could go back to my parents’ house. My grandfather was in the final stages of lung cancer so I couldn’t move back in with them. So the family of one of my good friends set up a trundle bed in his room and although I was never officially adopted I became one of their children. They were the youth pastors at the Baptist Church and they brought their faith home with them. They talked about what God was doing in their lives. They prayed a lot. They studied the scriptures at home. Faith mattered to them. My new family loved Jesus and I got to see it in action. As my professor said, the best Christian Education in the world takes place not in Sunday School but at home. Faith has to come home with us, as it did in Timothy’s family with his grandma Lois and his mom Eunice.

Life is busy, too busy for many of us. We do and do and do. We don’t see our families as much as we’d like. There’s always noise from the TV or the radio. Even though I’m a pastor, don’t for a second think that I live some sort of monastic existence where all I have to do is pray and read the Bible. I live in the same world you do. Phone calls. Paperwork. Deadlines. Meetings.

But if our faith is truly going to live within us, as Paul says of Timothy’s faith, then we must talk about what God is doing in lives at home, we must pray as a family and for our families, we must spend time in God’s Word, we must live in a way that our children and grandchildren can look at us and have no doubt in their minds that we do believe in Jesus Christ, that faith does matter.

Our faith cannot only live at 201 South Walnut, because if it does only live here then what happens when we are not at 201 South Walnut? It is as I quoted this past Wednesday night, “Sometimes you have to see somebody love Jesus before you can love him yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.” Who better to show the way than mom and dad, than grandma and grandpa, than husband or wife?

I say, "Thank God for Lois and Eunice."

I say, "Thank God for my best friend’s family."

I say, "Thank God for all who take their faith home with them."

And finally I say, "Thank God for a faith that lives within us instead of in this building."

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

2007-09-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

"Beautiful Feet"

Romans 10:8-15

Rev. Everett L. Miller

This week I came across the story of a man named Charles Chu. He tells of how, “A few years ago I had a chance to become a hero, but it turned out to be an embarrassing moment. I was in China on a tour group. My tour bus was on the way to a scenic spot with another tour bus in front of us. It was snowing, and the road was muddy.

“Suddenly the bus ahead of us skidded off the road and tipped over on its side in a rice field. I quickly jumped off my tour bus, ran to the overturned bus, and jumped on top. Windows were shattered, and the people inside were obviously hurt. The emergency door was facing upward, so I grabbed the handle of the emergency door and pulled. The door did not open. I kept pulling harder, but it wouldn’t budge.

“By this time, others had come and were pulling people out through the windows, so I gave up on the door and joined them. After I moved away from the door, another man went over to the door. He turned the door handle, and the door easily opened.

I suddenly realized why the door did not open for me: I had been standing on the door as I tried to open it. With good intentions to save lives, I had become the biggest obstacle blocking the door of rescue.”

The Apostle Paul quotes Isaiah 52:7, which says, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,” Paul tells the Romans. The problem for Charles Chu, as he was standing on top of that overturned bus was that his feet weren’t beautiful at all; they were in the way. All he needed to do was to open the door so people could climb through but instead he was unintentionally keeping people from being rescued because he was standing on the door. He was his own worst enemy.

In this section of Romans, Paul is talking about the difference between trying to work for God’s love and trusting in God’s love, which is a free gift of grace. He tells the Christians in Rome that when they have faith in Jesus Christ then their heart will tell them this: “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming.” I want you to repeat after me:

The Word is Near Me.
It is in my mouth and in my heart.

That is as true of you and me as it was of those Christians in the early church.

The Romans seem to have had similar questions to what we have often asked; why are there so many people out there who don’t believe? Why are there so many people right here in our own neighborhood who aren’t a part of what is happening in this community of faith? Man, if they only knew what they were missing. And it is to thoughts similar to that last comment that Paul responds.

Paul asks some biting rhetorical questions, “How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” In other words, How are people supposed to know what they are missing if no one tells them?

“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” I may sound funny but this morning I want us to ask ourselves this question, “How beautiful are my feet?”

Today is Evangelism Sunday in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Oh YUCK! Evangelism! Evangelism has become a loaded word for many Presbyterians and other mainline Christians. It has become something that we avoid and something of which we are afraid. The reason I think we are afraid of evangelism is because we only have one concept of what evangelism is and we don’t agree with it.

When Danielle used to work at the University of Texas I would meet her and a friend for lunch sometimes. We would walk through a portion of campus to get from their office to some college eateries. On many days that walk was like running the gauntlet through student groups camped out on corners and crosswalks where you couldn’t get away until the light changed. As you walked down the sidewalk they’d hand you flyers and tracts and every three feet or so someone would ask you, “Are you saved?” or “Do you know where you will spend eternity?” Hopefully not on this street corner, is the answer that came to my mind.

When many of us think of evangelism we picture people showing up on our doorsteps during dinner. We remember times when we felt pressured or offended by someone who didn’t know us at all, let alone did they have any business telling us we’re going to hell. We’ve seen the colorful little brochures that tell you the ABC’s of Salvation as though it was a simple recipe—just add water and poof your ticket is punched for heaven. For many of us these negative images are all we know of evangelism so we say, No way. This is not for me. And I would agree—No way. That is not for me either and if that is the only way to do evangelism then I don’t want anything to do with it.

We as Presbyterians need to view evangelism differently. Does that mean that we do not believe in personal salvation through Jesus Christ? No way. We very much believe as Paul says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” I believe very much in having a personal relationship with God. God is not just something out there that created the world, set down a few ground rules, then left. I trust God. I talk to God. I try my best to listen for God’s Word. Heck, I work for God. I think those of you who know me, know that I love Jesus and I try to share that love with others. I truly believe that Christ pulled me up out of a deep, deep hole and I thank God for that everyday. I believe all that and I am a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA). And I know a lot of other Presbyterians who believe the same thing, who recognize that they would be nothing without God and whose lives have been transformed by Jesus through a community of faith. And I know Presbyterians who believe in evangelism and I am one of them. But, I believe in a different kind of evangelism than what we often think of, an evangelism which I believe is more authentic and more loving. Maybe we shouldn’t even call it evangelism any more, simply because that word carries so much baggage with it for many of us. Maybe we should call it having an inviting faith. Or maybe we should call it having beautiful feet.

Here are some differences between what I am talking about and what we all want to avoid doing. As Presbyterians we don’t tend think of salvation as merely an instant in time—that moment when you kneeled down and said a sinners’ prayer and accepted Jesus into your heart. Now I do not mean to say that moments like that are not of great value. I had a moment like that myself, but it didn’t come while someone was accosting me on a street corner. It came several months after I became involved in a community of faith who embodied Christ’s love to me. I had to see it lived out first. I needed visual proof that it made a difference in the lives of real people. I needed to experience the love of Christians for me before I could ever believe that Jesus loves me. If Jesus does not make a difference in our own lives then we are not sharing the good news, we are just trying to recruit people to sit in the pews on Sundays.

As Presbyterians, most of us don’t think “Do you know where you are going to spend eternity?” is the appropriate question to ask people who are just trying to make it through the day. We believe that while we must respond to God’s grace through Jesus Christ, ultimately our salvation lies with God. Salvation isn’t just about where you are going to end up when you die. Salvation is also about how you are going to live your life, not as a better person or a moral person, but as what Paul calls “a new creation.” Salvation is about more than being rescued from hell in the hereafter. Salvation is about being rescued from selfishness and addictions and anger and sadness and hopelessness and loneliness. Salvation is about realizing that the moment you were saved was two thousand years ago on a cross just outside of Jerusalem. Salvation is about what John Calvin calls “being aroused to taste divine goodness” and “being wholly kindled to love God in return.”

Salvation isn’t just a punched ticket. Jesus doesn’t say “Give your life over to me this instant even though you have no idea what that means or what that might look like.” No, he says, “Come and See.” Jesus doesn’t ask, “Have you accepted me as your Lord and Savior?” Instead he says, “Follow me.” Salvation is a pilgrimage, a journey, which we must take as a child of God but that we also take together as a community built on faith in Jesus Christ and the love and grace that come to us through him. We know how the journey will end so we don’t have to be afraid. Salvation is both very personal and a path that we tread together. That is why before Christianity was ever called Christianity it was called The Way.

So what is evangelism for us Presbyterians who aren’t willing to wear sandwich boards reading, “THE END IS NEAR!” while walking up and down Main Street? Evangelism or, I’m sorry, having an inviting faith or having beautiful feet is inviting people to journey with this community of believers on The Way. Having beautiful feet is inviting people not “to get saved” but to experience salvation, to allow God to transform their lives the way that God has transformed ours. It is being so passionate about how God has, is, and will continue to work through this congregation that we have to tell others.

The pastor of Seacoast Church in South Carolina, which is one of the largest, fastest growing churches in the entire country says that 80% of people don’t come there for the first time because of all the TV commercials and billboards. They come because they were personally invited. 80%! Now of course they have everything known to man at Seacoast: a band, programs for all ages, tons of kids and young families. We don’t have that stuff. We cannot be them. We have to be us. But what does stay the same is that the only way new people will come here is for us to invite them, not just through the newspaper or door hangers but person to person.

So be refreshingly honest and candid with people. “No, we don’t have a praise band and we don’t have a huge youth group that takes ski trips every year and we don’t have a ton of kids filling our nursery. But you know what we do have? We have love and it is not just the love that we can muster up. It is the love that has been given by God, that has been poured out by Jesus Christ, that wells up in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you want bells and whistles go somewhere else but if you want authentic, life transforming love, if you want to hear the gospel and journey with this congregation in living it out, then we meet on Sundays at 10:30 am for worship. Give us four weeks in a row, and then make your decision.”

Do not be afraid to talk to people. Be honest with them. We have love to give in abundance. But it will take special people to be a part of this congregation, people who don’t have to walk into something that is already at its peak, but people who want to be a part of something new that is happening, or more accurately, something wonderful that is being renewed.

I, as your pastor, will do anything I can to help you. I will preach my heart out every Sunday. I will meet people who you want me to meet. I will be out in the community so people know who I am. I will do anything I can to provide you with tools to help people get to know what this congregation is all about. I will do anything I can, except I will not do it for you. I was not hired to do ministry for this congregation. I was hired to help this congregation do ministry. You have it in you. We can do everything in the world but unless those of us who worship here are passionate about our faith in Jesus Christ, passionately in love with the Kingdom of God then it won’t matter. I want you to repeat it after me again:

The Word is Near Me.
It is in my mouth and in my heart.

I have been with you in your living rooms, at your dinner tables, in your hospital rooms, at the funeral home. I have come to know you enough to know that your faith in Jesus Christ has gotten you through some deep, dark times. I know you well enough to know that this congregation has been there for you when you needed someone. I know you well enough to know that Jesus Christ does make a difference in your lives and that God has used this community of faith to help you be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I know all of that. But I’m not the one who really needs to know that; I work here. It is those on the outside of these doors who need to know that. “Man, if they only knew what they were missing.” How are people supposed to know what they are missing if no one tells them?

I am not asking any of you to start having tent revivals in your front yard. I’m not asking any of you to put bumper stickers on your cars saying, “Are you saved?” I am not asking any one to hand out tracts or brochures. I am not asking anyone to go door to door. I am not asking anyone to stand on a street corner. What I am asking each and every one of us to do is to invite people to experience the love of God through this community of faith, not so they will come to love this church but so that they might come to love God and love others through involvement in this church. If your only motivation for inviting others to First Presbyterian is so that First Presbyterian will be around in twenty years then you have the wrong motivation. Surviving is not our goal. Thriving is our goal. When it comes down to it I don’t care about making church members, Jesus never commanded that anyway. I care about making disciples. After all, if First Presbyterian is not reaching people for Christ then I hope it is not here in 20 years because it would be a stumbling block to those who are actually trying to impact people’s lives for Jesus Christ.

Charles Chu wanted people to come to safety. The people inside the bus wanted to get to safety. All Charles had to do was to open the door and help them through it. But, although he had good intentions, he was standing on the very door that led to their rescue, so they had to find another way. When we don’t share our faith then it is like we are standing on that door and people will find and already have found other ways to get to safety besides First Presbyterian. I came across a great quote this week. “Some of us are sitting on some fabulous churches and just expecting people to show up at the door.” I assure you. That is not going to happen.

Jesus transforms lives. Jesus has transformed many lives through this congregation. This is Good News. “Beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,” Paul says. I don’t know about you but I want to have beautiful feet.

2007-09-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

“For Kings and All in High Positions”
1 Timothy 2:1-7

Rev. Everett L. Miller

I once did some work for a little church that was having terrible difficulties; the members were divided from one another. Many people quit attending because they didn’t want to get caught up in the battle. One side would call a secret meeting without informing the other side. I’d be invited out for dinner thinking that I was going to get to know some of the parishioners but instead I was used as a sounding board for their hatred of the other side. It was, more than anything, a power struggle. Both sides knew they were right. Neither side would agree to sit down with the other like adults ought to, not to mention Christians.

One Sunday, while all this was going on but before I knew how ugly it could get, one of the elders volunteered to offer the prayer after the sermon. For the next five minutes she prayed, aloud and in front of everyone, that God would make the rest of the congregation stop mistreating her family and that they would come to realize that it was her side who was speaking the truth.

I’m not sure that I have ever felt that awkward during a prayer. I think everyone in the room knew that she wasn’t just praying to God; she was using the prayer as an opportunity to scold her opposition when they could not respond. I don’t think she is any worse than most of the others, though. I could just as easily see them doing the same thing; the division was ugly. I’d seen people get along better in a boxing ring than these people did in worship.

As I told you last week, 1 Timothy is a letter from the Apostle Paul to a young pastor in the city of Ephesus. After Paul has warned Timothy of false teachers and encouraged him through Paul’s own story of God’s grace and the strength which it gives, Paul begins to remind Timothy of what the community should be doing when they gather together. Interestingly enough he does not begin with a command to eat donuts and drink coffee, although I wish he did; that is much easier to do. No, he starts with prayer. At least when the congregation in Ephesus, who was having terrible difficulties at the time, met together the most important action they needed to be taking was to pray. He didn’t bother to go into too much detail of whether they should stand, sit, or kneel, eyes closed or eyes opened, out loud or to themselves. Those things may be important, but they are not the most important. The most important thing for the Ephesian Christians to be doing was to pray, however they did it.

That is why it is so important to stress Paul’s words, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone.” Paul goes on to support this command by saying that God wants all to be saved and that Christ died as a ransom for all. If we truly believe these statements of God’s love and care, then the way we pray for others must be transformed from our selfish motives into legitimate love and concern for the other person, whether that person is your precious grandson or Osama Bin Laden.

Now if God cares enough about everyone that God wants them to be saved and if Christ cared enough about them that he died on the cross not just for you and me but for all, then what does that say about how we should think of other people, and consequently how we should pray for them? Of course, we all know that elder who prayed on that Sunday morning was wrong. But how often do we lift up other people in prayer, entreating God to change their hearts and minds so they will agree with us, not necessarily so they will follow God’s plan for their lives or so that God’s Kingdom might reign with their participation.

The prayers you pray will change you more than they will change anyone. Why do you think Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for them”? I would be wrong to think I am supposed to pray that my enemies would come around and adopt my point of view. Who says I’m right? I am to pray that they adopt Christ’s point of view, not Everett’s. I believe Jesus said this because he knew that it is much harder to keep someone as an enemy if you are lifting them up in prayer on a daily basis. The great church father John Chrysostom once wrote, “no one can feel hatred towards those for whom he prays.” It is with this quote and Paul’s instruction to pray “for kings and all who are in high positions” in mind that I turn our attention to the already tiresome Presidential election of 2008.

It may be a little early in the scheme of things to preach this sermon but as it seems South Carolina and Iowa and New Hampshire keep trying to draw this thing out, I figure today’s lectionary passage from 1 Timothy gives me the opportunity to inject God’s Word into the upcoming presidential election before it gets totally out of hand.

I made a decision when I first decided to become a pastor that I wasn’t going to align myself with either side, but instead I was going to do my best to vote on the basis of what I believe to be God’s platform of grace, love, peace, justice, equality, and dignity, which I most certainly interpret differently than many other people and that’s okay; this is America after all.
During the presidential campaign of 1932, Will Rogers wrote:

There should be a moratorium called on candidates’ speeches. They have both called each other everything in the world they can think of. From now on they are just talking themselves out of votes. The high office of President of the United States has degenerated into two ordinarily fine men being goaded on by their political leeches into saying things that if they were in their right minds they wouldn’t think of saying…. This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it.

In this article he addressed the candidates, Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, “Both of you claim you like to fish, now instead of calling each other names till next Tuesday, why you can do everybody a big favor by going fishing, and you will be surprised but the old U.S. will keep right on running while you boys are sitting on the bank.”

Will Rogers wrote that article the week before the election. We’re not even in the year of the election yet and I already agree with his comments. I’m not going to get into who I think God wants to be the next president because I haven’t the slightest clue who that is. But I do think that 1 Timothy 2:1-4 has something to say about how we, as Christians, act during this whole election 2008 process which seems to have started sometime just after God said “Let there be light.”

I know this next statement may get me in trouble with some of you but so be it. Here it goes: political parties weren’t God’s idea, they were our idea so there is nothing more holy about being a Republican or a Democrat than there is in preferring Pepsi over Coke or vice versa. God’s Word is God’s Word independent of human institutions. One party may be able to say, “We are the party of Abraham Lincoln” while the other can say, “We are the party of FDR,” but neither can say, “We are the party of Jesus.” Heck, neither one can even say they are the party of George Washington, because he used his final address while in office to oppose the formation of any political parties at all.

So what might Paul’s words to Timothy and his congregation have to say about how we behave over the next 14 months? What am I getting at? Well we may not have kings anymore but we do have people who are in high positions and I would count anyone who has millions of supporters and who has the ability to influence their lives and who could possibly be President of the United States someday as someone in a high position. So we must pray for them, not just the ones we like but all of them, by name preferably. We do well to remember that Paul is saying this in a time when those in authority were most certainly not Christians and more than likely viewed Christians as atheists and traitors to the empire because of their refusal to participate in Roman civil religion. So he certainly does not mean praying for only those leaders with whom we agree.

The reason that Paul gives in making these prayers is “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” The first word, translated “quiet” has connotations of inward peace, the second, “peaceable,” of outward peace. “Godliness” can also be rendered as piety. It has to do with living the good Christian life, a life of faith and devotion to God. “Dignity” can also be given as proper conduct or respectability or respectfulness. There is a connection between our prayers for everyone, and even more specifically for those in positions of authority, and the state of our own lives.

There are two ways one contributes to the other. First, if we are people who truly lift up others, especially those in authority, whether we like them or not, then our prayer lives will lead to lives of inward and outward peace, of proper reverence for God, of respectability and respectfulness, and will finally be pleasing to God. Secondly, if we pray that those in authority would lead both their campaigns and eventually their potential office with wisdom, civility, cooperation, peace, integrity, and godliness then our government will be run better, people’s rights will be protected, and ultimately you and I, and hopefully everyone else, can lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

To truly pray for someone is to declare that person your equal before God. It is to assert that they, just like you and me, were created in the image of God. It is to celebrate the fact that God knew them before they were in the womb and that they were fearfully and wonderfully made. It is to remember what Paul said, that God wants all to be saved and Christ died for all. It is to strip away the titles of presidential candidate, of Republican, of Democrat, of Senator, of Governor, of Mayor and to lift them up to God as a fellow human being, as a creation of God’s own love and imagination. Then Hillary Clinton becomes my sister and Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and Barak Obama are all my brothers. And this goes for our current President as well, whether you like him or not. And who knows, maybe it will open our minds so that we can actually listen to what they have to say instead of simply dismissing them because of what we think we know about them.

Please do not misinterpret what I am saying. I am not advocating the abandoning of political parties. I am simply trying to remind all members of political parties that it is they who are the members, not Jesus and not his Church. So over the next 14 months or so, remember what has been said this morning and every now and then pick up the remote and turn off CNN or MSNBC or CSPAN or Fox News and lift these people up before God’s throne of grace. Stand, sit, or kneel, open or close your eyes, say it out loud or in your own head, I don’t care but remember that before you are a Republican or a Democrat and even before you are an American you are a member of the human race and a disciple of Jesus Christ who died and rose just as much for Rudy Giuliani as he did for Hillary Clinton as he did for you and me. And then may supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.