As I drove around town last Friday, I flipped through the right wing section of the radio dial to see how folks were analyzing the shootings at Fort Hood. To a one, there was a general indictment of Islam, of Muslims, of Arabs. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear whether or not the shootings in Orlando was an indictment of engineers.
Any time rampant violence makes its way to the head of the newsroom, I am reminded of Jesus’ response to those looking to find easy answers to the death of those whom Pilate killed while making their sacrifices in the Temple. Rather than offering a quick analysis – e.g. those who were killed were deserving because they were sinful, Pilate is just a rotten S.O.B., let’s avenge their deaths, etc. – Jesus suggests that these moments are ones that call people of faith to repentance. Every time we hear of such bloodletting, or even witness it for ourselves, the Christian’s first reaction should be to engage in self-reflection on how we stand in our relationships – with God, and with others.
I mentioned all this during announcements this morning at church, convinced that OPC is not a congregation that needs a reminder that the shootings and Fort Hood don’t say so much about a religion or a national origin as they do about a common humanity that binds us all. But listening to right wing radio two days ago, there are a lot of folks out there who are deeply infected by the confidence that such moments are not ones of intensive self-reflection, but ones that prop up our already existing stereotypes.
It reminded me that when I was in Chicago, we got word that the Oklahoma Federal Building was hit by major bombing. Sunday came, and we still didn’t know who the perpetrators were. The pastor spoke to the congregation, saying that we need to be careful not to presume guilt of one kind or another before we have the facts. He was lambasted by several members, convinced that this was clearly the work of Muslim extremists. We later, of course, learned that this was not the case.
When I first heard that Major Hasan, the suspected killer, was an American of Palestinian Muslim origin, I wasn’t surprised. But I wouldn’t have been surprised, either, if I heard that he was an American Christian, an Israeli Jew. In fact, no combination of ancestry or religion (or lack of) would have surprised me. The thing that convicts me most about being a Christian is that we are, all of us, sinners in the face of God’s perfect grace. We all do things we shouldn’t; and we all don’t do things we should. I’m reminded of Sufjan Stevens’ haunting song “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” in which he sings of the chilling mass murders and then follows with the verse:
And in my best behavior, I am really just like him.
Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.
Maybe it’s not the religious aspect that draws attention in this case; instead, it’s the idea that “one of our own,” an army man, would do this to his fellow soldiers. Can Christians really be surprised that betrayal is a human trait, either, as it stands at the center of our story?
Pray for the victims at Fort Hood, yes. And pray for the shooter, Maj. Hasan. Jesus would expect no less.
The John text is the same one we read this morning in worship. In the context of a service for healing and wholeness, it has a different flavor to it, especially after hearing that story of Elijah meeting the widow of Zarephath, this Gentile woman who was supposed to be outside the bounds of grace. Elijah goes to her, this poor woman who has run out of food and even oil, and he performs this miracle where the oil never runs out. Oil was not only a staple in cooking, it was also used in the anointing of priests. It was used sacrificially and in healing. There’s something in that story that reminds us that God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s healing never runs out.
Lazarus had been dead four days by the time Jesus came on the scene and raised him from the dead. There’s something about these stories that is prone to misinterpretation. When we look at these stories of Jesus healing, we might be tempted to think that if only we had enough faith we might be healed and fixed. I’m pretty sure that everyone has had experiences of being with people who are deeply faithful and still get sick and still die. God does not send cancer because we do not believe in Jesus enough. God gives creation just enough freedom and these things happen. The reminder is that God is always with us through it all.
A couple of years ago, I realized that I had taken this the sense of creation’s freedom to heart so much that I had almost given up on the idea of God doing miraculous things. It was as though I were hedging my prayers. What I realized was, and it was in stories like the story of Lazarus, that there was something to be said for prayer that was bold, that asked for the impossible, there in the midst of the ICU in the hospital, and at home in the midst of broken relationships, to ask for God to be a work in miraculous ways. The foundation at the foot of all that remains trust in God, that God would be there no matter what.
It reminds me of a story a chaplain friend of mine shared me. One of the first families he visited when he was a chaplain were in the ICU, gathered around their loved one. And their prayer was fervent: “God, we know you’re going to heal her, and we just give you praise and we know that she is going to get up and walk again.” My friend beginning to think about what will happen when this doesn’t come be. Is their faith going to be shaken? Is it going to be destroyed? And it became clear that she was not going to make it. And when she died, their prayer became one of thanksgiving: “Thank you, God, that her suffering has ended.” They prayed boldly, and no matter what, they knew that God was at work. They trusted that healing, true healing, wholeness, is bigger than life and death, and that God would be at work no matter what.
There’s something else about this story of Lazarus that is remarkable. Jesus calls out to Lazarus and he comes out, but he’s still bound up in those grave clothes. Jesus turns him over to the crowd, and says, “You unbind him and let him go.” There’s a reason we’re all here tonight together. Maybe tonight is the first step of healing for some of you. But maybe you need more than just one person. Maybe you need to know that you’re not alone in the midst of this. Jesus has commanded us to unbind one another. That’s what it means to share in our meal together, to gather in this community, in this communion. The strangest we proclaim in the midst of this feast is that Jesus is broken, and that is what heals us. It is as though our own brokenness becomes one with Jesus’ brokenness, that our need for healing is taken up into Jesus himself on the cross, is buried with him in the tomb, and is raised with him.
Over the past few months, we’ve gone with this topic of Getting Back on Track. We have used the journey of faith, this metaphor of progression (or so we assume), of following along with the footsteps of Jesus. But the journey of faith does not necessarily always move forward. The question is: what we do when we’re knocked back? What do we do when the path is gone, when we can’t see the way before us? Our worship has included music from South Africa. How long did the people there have to sing the songs like “Freedom is coming, oh yes, I know,” all the while wondering if it really was?
If you’re looking for a sermon the easy answers, you will be sorely disappointed. This text is a challenging one and it is also one that points to the complexity of life that we already know in our own experiences, how the journey of faith has its twists, turns, detours, and steps back. There is a key point in the text that comes up again and again: Jesus is upset in this text. Maybe he knows the way this story is going to end, but the writer makes the point of saying that Jesus was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved”; “Jesus began to weep”; Jesus, again, “was greatly disturbed”. If Jesus gets knocked back, how can we expect that the same wouldn’t happen to us?
What do we do what it feels hopeless? What do we do what we’re faced with death of ourselves or loved ones? What do we do when we hear news of an illness that is incurable, of a relationship that we’re in and we treasure, and yet it’s impossibly fractured? What do we do when stress piles up on us, when debt makes us feel like we’re drowning, when the responsibilities we carry on our shoulders crush us? What do we do when we are in the midst of imprisonment, or in the face of apartheid or injustice?
There’s something in this lesson for all of us, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead in the town of Bethany. Bethany is to the East of Jerusalem, up on a hill overlooking Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. It is the same place that Jesus sends the disciples to get that donkey to go down on Palm Sunday into Jerusalem. Today the town of Bethany is known in Arabic as Al-Azaria, named after Lazarus, this famous resident of the town.
The first that may jump out is that this story has parallels with the resurrection story, which appears several chapters later in John’s gospel. We have a death that’s at the center of the story. We have a stone that is rolled up against a cave tomb. But there’s a huge difference. Jesus does not give Lazarus resurrection; he gives him revivification. He brings him back to life. Yes, Lazarus died, and Jesus raised him. But Lazarus remains mortal. He is raised from the dead to go on to die another day. Why did Jesus do this? It fits very well into the “signs and wonders” of the miracle stories of the New Testament. This is a revelation of the Messianic age, to say, “I’m the one that you’ve been waiting for. And the proof of it is this: Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.”
But when Jesus dies and is raised, Jesus is changed. When he encounters the disciples on the road to Emmaeus, they don’t even recognize him. They are telling Jesus about Jesus and what happened to Jesus and they don’t even know it’s Jesus. He has been transformed by being resurrected. And he does not raise from the dead to die other day; he ascends into heaven.
My question is: How often are our prayers, in the midst of feeling hopeless, for revivification and reanimation? Not resurrection, but having back what we used to have? Think of the Israelites in the wilderness. They have been freed from slavery and they are there in the desert with God providing for their needs. They say, “We had it better back in Egypt.” For them, new life means returning back to the way it was because it’s better than the way things are. What they missed is that they’re being led into a land of promise.
When we yearn for an economic turnaround in our society, do we want to go back to the way it was? Really? Or have we recognized how flawed our system is, and that there might be better ways of being in economic relationship with one another? If responsibilities are weighing us down, do we simply want the strength to carry them, or does that run the risk of helping us fool ourselves into thinking that we are independent and can carry in the first place? If the stress is on us, do we simply want the stress to go away, or do we recognize that life is a series of stresses that come and go, and if they leave they will surely come again?
The trick that this story introduces to us is that we have to remember that the life of faith in Christ isn’t as simple as, “I want it, I ask for it, I get it.” The life of faith is not one of asking for what you want and then opening your mailbox and finding there. God is not a puppet master. Life is complicated, painful, difficult. My hunch is that each one of us knows exactly what I mean in some personal way. It could be recently or in the distant past. But we know that life is not perfect. The good news is that God is with us. Jesus weeps with us.
What would it mean for us to pray for resurrection instead? What would it mean for us to pray for new life in Christ in whatever that hopelessness is that we find? What would be the difference between living in order to die other day instead of opening ourselves to transformation to point that we are unrecognizable, changed by life in Christ? That, to me, is the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism feels like going back to those times that were really good. Hope is what holds us fast in the midst of the kind of situation that South Africans faced under Apartheid: “Freedom is coming. Oh, yes, I know! I may not be able to see it. I may not believe it with my mind. But my heart and my faith teaches me that it’s true.” And when Apartheid ends, we have just a taste of the truth that we already know.
It reminds me of the woman who was asked what her favorite verse of Scripture was, and she said, “It came to pass.” In another words, life moved on. Things changed. Or another way of putting it: even the snail made it onto the ark.
Hope implies trust in God. When it’s hopeless, hope reminds us that we serve a God who is trustworthy. It is not always going to be easy. But it is always going to be true that God is with us, that Jesus weeps with us, that the Spirit surrounds us and uplifts us. Freedom is coming. Oh, yes, I know. Amen.
I’m reminded of the Halloween story of the mad scientist doing an experiment on frogs. He puts a frog down on a mat next to a measuring tape. He bends down over the frog, and he says, “Jump! Jump!” The frog jumps 20 feet. He takes out his notebook and writes, “Frog with four legs jumps 20 feet.” He picks up the frog and takes a scalpel (Halloween story, ya’ll; not for the faint of heart), and he cuts off one of the frog legs and puts him back down on the mat. He says, “Jump! Jump!” The frog jumps 15 feet. He writes down, “Frog, 3 legs, 15 feet.” He takes the frog again, cuts off another one of the frog’s legs, and puts him back on the mat. “Jump! Jump!” the frog jumps 10 feet. He writes, “Frog, 2 legs, 10 feet.” He takes the frog again, cuts off one more leg. He’s down to one leg. “Jump! Jump!” The frog jumps 5 feet. He writes in his notebook “Frog, 1 leg, 5 feet.” He takes the frog again, cuts off the last leg, puts him back on the mat, and says, “Jump! Jump!” Nothing. “Jump! Jump!” Takes out his notebook, and writes, “Frog, no legs, deaf.”
Sometimes when the evidence is before us, we interpret it as we would like.
We have been the spending the last month and a half or so looking at the travels of Jesus. We have been following the footsteps of Jesus in these stories and trying to get back on track in our own lives. Today, we are in Jericho, right next to the Jordan river. It is in the middle of the desert. But Jericho itself is a kind of oasis. So as Jesus and the disciples are moving from the Galilee down toward Jerusalem, they would stop in Jericho at this oasis, before taking the ascent up into the city of Jerusalem.
Today we are focusing on the idea of perspective. We began with perspective. How is it that we take a step back from where we are and get a sense of our context. We’re a little over half way through, which seems like a good time to stop again to try and get perspective because we often see what we want to see.
What better character in the Scriptures to teach us about sight than blind Bartimaeus. Here he is, this beggar, on the outskirts of Jericho, sitting by the road as Jesus and the disciples are walking by. He calls out to Jesus with an amazing statement of faith: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Here is this blind beggar, this outcast of society, forced to beg in order to make ends meet. And yet, he somehow recognizes who Jesus is. The crowd tried to quiet him. “Jesus is important. He doesn’t have time for people like you.” Bartimaeus response is to shout all the louder: “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
But as soon as Jesus hears him, he turns the crowd. He says, “Call him her.” And the crowd says, “Oh, take heart! He wants to see you!” They have just been shutting him up and now they want to put him in the center of attention. And as heals him, he says that he went his way following Jesus as he and the disciples went on their to Jerusalem.
The irony of Bartimaeus is that he was blind; but he saw better than anybody else in that story. Nobody in the crowd recognized Jesus for who he was. Nobody in the crowd thought that Jesus would waste his time on a blind beggar. But Bartimaeus called out, called him Son of David, and asked for the impossible: to regain his sight.
There are times in our life when we need that moment to get perspective, when we need to see again as if for the first time, when we realize ourselves that we are blinded and need that divine opening of our eyes to see the world around us and to see our situation. And there are times when in order to get perspective we need to retreat, to get away. We talked about this before. If you don’t have, in the rhythm of your life, regular time to get away, to spend time with yourself away, to reflect and get that perspective, whether it’s daily or weekly or monthly or annually, some time to reconnect with what it is that’s important to you.
But there are times when getting perspective means actually getting closer to God, prayer, discipline…The spiritual life is often like exercise. We may have the best intentions and we don’t always follow through. But ultimately we know that we need to get in that discipline of being in regular prayer, Bible Study, in classes, discussions, retreat, time alone with God. But the question is how do we do that?
It strikes me that there are two different groups that we might fit into and are there in this gospel lesson. The first group is a group of one: Bartimaeus. Everything’s been stripped away. He can’t see. He can’t make a living for himself. He is begging and is dependent upon the kindness of strangers in order to make his daily living. He knows exactly what he needs for healing. He can’t see and he needs to see; and so he calls out to Jesus. It’s very obvious the kind of person Bartimaeus represents. There are times in our own lives when we might feel a synergy with Bartimaeus, that everything we have has been taken away, and we’re starting over, and we know exactly what it is that we think we need.
There’s this other group: the crowds. They think they’ve got it right. They think they know what they’re doing. They are already following this Jesus and trying to keep the wrong people away. And they are fickle, flipping on the Bartimaeus issue when the wind changes.
Both groups need perspective. For Bartimaeus, it’s obvious. In order to get perspective, he simply needs to see. The crowds, however, need perspective because they’re the ones that think they’ve got their act together and it takes Jesus to point out what they’ve been missing all along.
Do either of these groups resonate with you? Do they describe you and your need for perspective? Maybe you’re more like Bartimaeus, knowing exactly what it is that you need. Maybe all has been stripped away and what you need is the encouragement, the boldness of Bartimaeus to go out and to ask for it. If that speaks to you, then my encouragement is to go and find that oasis, that Jericho in your own life: a place like your own backyard, or somewhere far away like the mountains; a time of day, maybe early in the morning or late at night is when you can be alone, where you feel most able to seek God. Ask for what it is that you think you need and Jesus will hear.
Or maybe you’re part of the crowd, thinking you’ve got it all together. Or maybe everybody else thinks you’ve got it together, but you know the truth about yourself. If that’s the case, then maybe it’s time to let our minds be changed, to listen again to Jesus, and hear that voice that might speak to us in a new way and help us to see things that we have never seen before about ourselves, about those on the margins, about the world around us. One of my favorite quotes is from Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision International: “Let your heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.” Maybe that’s the very thing that we need: to have the heart of God in our own lives, a heart that might break so we might see those blind beggars by the side of the road.
But more importantly, no matter who we are in this story, no matter where we see ourselves, maybe it’s time for all of us to admit the truth: we are the blind beggar. D.T. Niles, famous theologian, says that the best definition of evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Friends, we’re just beggars. No matter how much we think we might have, all that we really have, and all that we really need, comes from the one who blesses us, the God who creates us, and calls us, and redeems us.
If we are in a place where we need to see again, as if for the first time, if we have been blinded, then it is God who brings the healing and will show us where to find that bread we need.
There’s this thing about perspective. When I read this lesson, story I am struck by the fact that, for Bartimaeus, there’s a singular moment where everything changed. One day he was blind, he came to Jesus, and the next day he saw. There is this earth shattering moments where suddenly his life is changed. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a moment of my life that has been like that. Maybe you have had that, which probably means that you have been broken so badly that the transformation is this outrageous blessing.
But maybe it’s more like moving a house. Around the corner, there’s a house being moved. The house was very old, and in order to protect the integrity of the foundations and to keep it from crumbling, they had to move it six inches at a time. On a day to day basis, it was difficult to noticed that the house had moved at all. But after a while, you might think, “Wasn’t that house next to the road, that one that’s back there in the woods?”
Maybe those moments in your life are more like that house. We might not be able to see on a day-to-day basis. But as we look back with that perspective, we can see how far it is that God has brought us.
I want to encourage you to be bold, to seek God – whatever that means to you. Tell God what it is that you need. The truth may be that when we ask for what we need it may really be what we want. God knows what we truly need. My fellow beggars, it is God who will give us that bread that will fill us and make us whole.
Special thanks to my good friend Issa in Gaza for the frog joke. He tells it much better than I ever could. Please say a prayer for Gaza today.
Over the past few weeks and over the next few weeks we are following the travels of Jesus through the Holy Land as he makes his way from the Galilee toward Jerusalem. Today we are in the region across the Jordan River. The idea as we make these travels together is that perhaps by following Jesus in his footsteps that we ourselves might be able to get back on track in our own lives. We’ve touched on many aspects of this idea, of getting back on track, of finding our footing again with the way that life knocks us off balance. Today we’re looking at the idea of knowing when to let go.
I want to suggest the possibility that there are things to which we cling, that we hold to desperately, that get in our way of following Jesus.
In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford is on his quest for the Holy Grail.
It has been about twenty years since the film came out, but there are still a lot of scenes that say something about to the life of faith.
***spoiler alert*** (it has been 20 years…)
In the final scene in the movie, they are riding through the desert looking for the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus shared at the Last Supper with the disciples. Indiana Jones is the one that picks it out because he knows that its this simple one made by a carpenter, not the fancy gold one his Nazi competitors think it is. Once they have discovered the Grail, then the earth begins to shake and begins to break and give way. As the Grail falls off a ledge, Elsa, who has been his love interest up to this point and then turns out to be a Nazi collaborator, she wants the Grail and falls off the ledge reaching for it, and it’s just out of her grasp. Indiana Jones is holding onto her hand and she’s reaching and reaching until he can’t hold on anymore and finally she slips and falls into the abyss. Immediately after that scene, Indiana Jones tries the same thing. But his father manages to pull him back from the brink and lets go of the Grail so that he might live. For Elsa it was her refusal to let go that was her demise. For Indiana Jones, it was his ability to let go that saved his life.
In the story of the rich young ruler, the rule kneels before Jesus. He submits before Jesus, calling him a “Good Teacher.” Jesus rebukes him, because “No one is good but God.” The man learns from that and addresses him appropriately the next time. But he didn’t learn quite enough. Jesus tells him, “Here’s what you need to do in order to inherit eternal life, to enter the kingdom of God, to participate in the desires of God and the way that God wants the world to be, which is on its way. You have to follow the Commandments. You know what they are. There’s the ten in the famous list from Mount Sinai. There are the more than 600 throughout the Hebrew Bible.”
And the man says, “I got those. Check. I’ve been doing that since I was little kid. I’ve got that straight.”
At which point Jesus says, “There’s one thing you lack: sell everything that you own, give it to the poor, and then come and follow me.” And we read that the man went away grieved, dejected, downhearted, because he had many possessions.
Is there a broader lesson for all of us in this? I want to be careful, because there’s something contextual about it all; Jesus is speaking to this one man for whom his wealth is a barrier to following Jesus. But I also don’t want let us off the hook too easy. This leads us to ask ourselves, “Is it possible that what we possess, the riches that we might have, get in our way of following Jesus?” It’s in this story that Jesus gives that incredible, impossible, ridiculous example of the camel going through the eye of a needle. You may have heard in Sunday School that it wasn’t really a camel and it’s not really the eye of a needle, but rather a gate in Jerusalem that was called the “eye of the needle,” and the only way to get through that gate was to kneel down; so it’s not really about this impossibility of physics, of a dromedary getting through the eye of a needle; instead, it’s more about humility: submitting before God and entering God’s presence. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. There is no such gate in Jerusalem. We’re not let off that easy.
So then, what does that word “rich” really mean? What does it mean to be rich, to possess enough to be called “rich”? The disciples wrestle with this. They recognize the frank reality of it, responding, “Nobody can enter heaven. If you raise the bar that high, then nobody can get in.” I did some number checking this morning. My salary is a matter of public record. If you’re curious, you can go look it up. The congregation has to vote on it every year. You know what it is that I make. I wanted to compare my salary with what it means to be rich. In the United States, my salary is above average. It is right about in the middle. Is that rich? Is that middle class? That might be a matter of debate. Globally, however, I’m in the top 0.78%. I better practice my needle threading.
I think the truth is that a lot of us are like that rich young man. We may have submitted to Jesus, as he did, kneeling before him. We may have joined a church, or been baptized, or have taken on a leadership role, or have gone into professional ministry. But the question is: “Are we really following Jesus?” Have we really taken up our cross and followed him?”
What is the one thing that we lack? what is that one thing that Jesus would name in us that would send us away grieving? What is it that you hold to that keeps you from holding onto God? It could be wealth. It could be something else. Maybe you have an anger or a resentment about a situation in your life that you just can’t let go of. You want to hold onto it. Maybe there’s an old wound that just won’t heal that keeps you from following Jesus. Maybe it’s a drive for success, all things at all costs. Maybe you ask yourself a series of “What ifs” and If onlys”, all these questions, that act like a rocking chair: they give us something to do, but they don’t get us anywhere. Maybe you know right now that are not following Jesus fully, maybe you know that you are holding on to something, but you’re going to get around to it later when the time is right and things calm down.
I was struck by something else in this text and the idea in our theme this morning of “Letting Go.” Elizabeth and I were a fortune enough to get to go to the U2 concert this past Tuesday. Since then, we’ve been listening all week to our U2 albums and have been reconnecting with the meaning of the songs. There are incredible spiritual and Biblical themes in Bono’s lyrics. There’s one song that I’ve heard before, but didn’t really recognize it until this week. It’s from the album War, and it’s called “Drowning Man.” Bono sings:
“Take my hand. You know I’ll be there. I’ll cross the sky for your love. These winds and tides won’t drag you away. Hold on and hold on tightly. Hold on and don’t let go of my love.”
At first glance, it’s simply a love song. Somebody is drowning and someone is reaching out. But as the lyrics unfold and Bono begins to quote Scripture,
“Rise up with wings like eagles. You’ll run and won’t grow weary”,
we know that the love song is from God to someone who feels like they’re drowning.
Does that feel like it describes you? Are you drowning? Do you even know it? Or do you in fact know it but can’t admit it? Is there something in your moral center that is bugging you that you just can’t bring yourself to look at? Is there something that you are holding onto that makes it more and more difficult for God to take hold of your hand? Let go. Let go. And let God take hold. Let go so that Christ can embrace you fully. Let go so the Spirit can lift you up with wings like eagles! Is there one thing that you lack? Is there one thing that sends you away from following Jesus again and again, grieving your own inability to unclench your fist? Maybe you can’t do it. Maybe it’s impossible. But with God, all things are possible.
Prayer: Lord God, there are times that we hold our hands together so tightly that not even light can get in. We cling desperately to the things that we think make for life. Help us to remember that it is you hold us in the palm of your hand; it is your light which heals us and strengthens us. Help us to let go of possessions, ideas, pains that keep us from opening our hand to you. We pray all of this in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.
I consider myself blessed to have known Tim, but as we put his service together, I discovered that I didn’t know a great deal about him. And then I realized something. Every time I would go to visit him at Atlanta Cancer Care, the conversation would begin about his condition: the latest news from the doctors, the details and difficulties of travel. But it was never long before Tim had successfully turned the conversation to be about me. And the more I’ve learned about Tim over the past few days, the more I see that I was not unique. There were times that this selflessness could frustrate his family, since others could jump ahead in the line, but as I heard them talk about it, I know that they know it as a gift that was uniquely his.
A few years ago, when violent storms were bearing down on the Caribbean, Tim was getting frantic calls about boarding up houses in preparation for the torrential rains. And he went out there taking care of them all. He left his own home to the very end. And when the apartment building where Tim and his wife Sandra lived lost its roof in a storm, Tim called the landlord to get it repaired. After a day or so of waiting, Tim went up and fixed it himself. I’m sure he knew he could do a better job than anyone else of that repair. And I may be off track here, but I wonder if he also worried about troubling the landlord with something he could just take care of himself.
There are so many stories to share, and there will be time to do that today and in the days to come. But the image that jumps out at me from the many stories I’ve heard this past week was how Tim worked as a supervisor of his roofers. He not only oversaw their work; he also got up there with them, getting his hands dirty. He loved the manual labor, surely. It was something he knew how to do extremely well, by all accounts. But he also had a knack for mentoring, coaching, teaching someone how to do something by doing it with them. And on this day, when we have this moment where tears and laughter mingle, where we cry at Tim’s absence, where we smile at memories of his presence, where we are grateful that his suffering that has ended, it seems altogether fitting and appropriate to lift up this aspect of Tim’s way of being.
You see, I’m convinced that we can recognize in Tim, the mentor, a glimpse of the God, the comforter, whom we worship. It is this same God who, the Scriptures tell us, is with us no matter how far to the ends of the earth we might go. It is this same God who renews our strength, with wings of eagles, when we are weak. It is this same God whose mercy and love are so strong and enduring that nothing, not even life or death itself, can separate us from God. It is the same God, of whom Paul writes simply in Philippians, who “is near.” And it is that same God who, in the person of Christ, comes alongside of us, showing us how it might be done, teaching us, encouraging us.
I got to know Tim over the past few years when he began to come to Atlanta for his treatments. From time to time, I would sit with him on a Friday morning, chat and pray with him. Every now and then, he would stay over the weekend and come to worship at OPC. I often asked his parents how he was doing, and they would bring me up to speed. But the way I really knew how things were going was through Sandra’s faithful updating of Tim’s CaringBridge website. As weird as it might sound, it was there on the web, through Sandra’s descriptions, photographs, requests for prayer, words of thanks and gratitude, through the ups and downs, I saw something truly remarkable; divine, even.
There are thirty-seven pages of entries; more than a hundred different people signing the guestbook, usually a multitude of times, on behalf of spouses and other family members. And in that cyberworld, I saw evidence of this loving, nurturing, teaching, encouraging God at work: Sandra alongside Tim through it all; family that surrounded him and walked with him; friends who accompanied him on flights and doctors’ visits; nurses and techs and doctors who treated him with compassion and respect; people signing internet guestbooks, offering encouragement, support, prayers, hopes, tears, laughter. Through you all, God was there every step of the way. And through them all, God is still with you all every step of the way.
God is with us, even, and especially, now; and God is with Tim, even, and especially, now.
Yesterday morning, after the alarm went off, I lay in bed and said a brief prayer: “Lord, please send ten visitors to worship this morning.” At 11:00, I looked around the sanctuary and counted – eleven. I must admit it freaked me out a little bit.
I don’t think prayer is like getting your three wishes from the genie where you have to be careful what you ask for. I’m enough of a Presbyterian to believe that God will do as God sees fit and that I’m in no position to force God’s hand. That being said, I also want to be sure God knows what I want. It’s why I pray for healing even in the most desperate of circumstances; it may not be what happens, but it sure is what the family wants at that moment. And God is big enough to handle us speaking frankly.
What if I had prayed for ten visitors and there had only been nine? Or five? Or two? Or none? I don’t know what that might mean. If there hadn’t been any, my guess is that I would still know that God heard my prayer; but I would probably begin to think that all this talk about growth at OPC was simply not in the cards.
But to pray for ten and to get eleven? That sends me down a different path. Could it be a matter of pure chance? Absolutely. At times I’m enough of a skeptic to put that possibility first (or a close second). But yesterday, I felt it differently. To me it was a confirmation of our desire to have an even greater impact on our wider community.
And that “extra” one? Well, as Nigel Tufnel says, “It’s one louder, isn’t it?” Maybe it’s a nudge to expect blessings to be greater than we might ever imagine…
Today we’re back in Capernaum, immediately following the story we heard last week. As we look and that text, let’s keep in mind the topic: Who Is on My Side? Am I Alone? Every single one of us, at some point in our lives, has felt alone; maybe in the literal sense of feeling friendless, or maybe in more of a metaphorical sense that we are in community with others, but we have no one to talk to about our situation: our doubts, our fears, our direction in life. We feel like we might be alone in what we face in life. Our text can give us some insights on how we might deal with these feelings of loneliness and isolation.
John comes to Jesus bragging, thinking he has done the right thing, that there’s been this exorcist going around and saying, “I cast out demons in the name of Jesus,” but since he wasn’t an officially sanctioned disciple, “we told him to go away. We did the right thing, didn’t we?” Once again, Jesus, as he often seems to do, surprises the disciples when they feel at their most righteous and reveals them as off track. He says, “That’s not what it’s about. I know that this guy thinks he has power because he’s using my name, but that’s not really the issue.” And then he adds this provocative statement: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
The disciples must be scratching their heads and saying, “What does it mean to be for you if you can be with this other guy and that’s OK?” Jesus responds by making the teaching tangible: “Whoever gives a drink of cold water to one of these little ones who follow me will have their reward.” That meaning would have been lost by those living in the ancient Near East at the time when the custom was, even until today, to give somebody something cool to drink when they come inside from the heat outdoors. When I was in the Middle East this Summer, the first thing that happened when we checked into a hotel is that someone would meet us with a a platter of fresh juice.
And if that’s not clear enough, Jesus goes on to give some pretty stark examples of what it means to keep somebody on the outside. Remember last week that he had a child in his arms. It may be that this child is still there in his arms. He says, “If you prevent one of these who are on the margins, who are outside, despised, the marginalized, if you prevent them from coming into fellowship with me, with us, it would be better for you to have a millstone around your neck and be tossed into the sea.” He says this as they’re sitting feet away from the Sea of Galilee. Millstones are not small. Those for grinding grain by hand can be about two feet across; those for crushing olives into oil are six feet in diameter. Jesus is not being subtle here. It’s like the Jesus version of the mafia’s concrete shoes.
From there he talks about self inflicted damage: “It would be better for you to chop your foot off or poke your eye out or cut your hand off than to go into hell.” I think it is important for us to say that we take Scripture seriously, and not literally. Jesus often speaks in metaphor. Are we really pluck out our eye? Are we really to cut off our hand? Are we really to chop our foot off? No. But Jesus is being blunt in order to make a point about exclusion and inclusion. If we are excluding people, then we are completely missing the point. When Jesus uses the word “hell,” the Greek word is Gehenna. It was a literal place. Just to the south of the old city of Jerusalem, there was a valley (Ge) of Henna. Gehenna was the municipal dump. All the refuse would be dumped into this valley and you burned it. This is where we get the image of hell as a place of fire. Gehenna was a valley where trash was burned. And that fire never went out. It was an unquenchable fire.
Jesus is making the teaching that he gives relevant to the people’s lives. In essence, he is saying, “This stuff matters. No, I don’t want to cut your foot off. No, I don’t want you to chop your hand off. We’ve all been in Jerusalem. We’ve seen what’s just outside the city walls. We’ve all seen millstones and the sea is right there. I mean this stuff. Make sure that you are not excluding those that I would like to include.”
There’s something about our contemporary culture and it’s unique character. Part of it breeds isolation. We consider self-reliance one of the highests form of character. In a sense, to be dependent on somebody else, even for a short period of time, is seen as failure. At the same time, personal privacy is one of the highest values in our society. When Elizabeth and I lived in Palestine, we learned how a different culture treats these issues. In Palestinian culture, we came to call the strong hospitality of hospitality lovingly as “belligerent hospitality.” In the afternoons and evenings, people would walk around town and be invited into homes and be given a cup of cold water and sit down and drink coffee together and then go onto the next house. As we came into this town, we learned that hospitality was central. Since we had no family there, it was especially important that folk reach out to us. I remember one time in particular that we were walking past somebody’s house and he invited us to come and drink a cup of coffee. We were in a hurry, and when we passed by, saying, “No, thank you,” I reached out to shake his hand. He pulled and pulled and I have this image of my foot on his door post trying to turn loose. Our friend Marwan would come over to visit us from time to time. He would knock on the door, and there were times when we just wanted to be alone. We wouldn’t answer. He would knock again. He would try the handle. It would be locked. He would leave for a little while, go outside, call from his cell number, and we’d let it ring. Then he’d come back up, knock on the door again, and try the handle. The point there was not an invasion of our privacy; even though it felt like that to the two Americans. The point was to say, “You are welcome. You are on the inside. You are included.”
There must be middle ground, of course. But we can look at our own culture and see what it is that we can learn about what it means to be alone. We know that there are those of us who are naturally more inclined to be introverted, that we get exhausted by being with other people and get the most energy from being alone. There are others of us who are extroverts. We are most on of our game when we are surrounded by others; We get energy from that. Not everyone is alike. But I can’t help but wonder this week: could it be that there are times when isolation and loneliness is self-inflicted? I say this with a great deal of caution. I’m aware of the seriousness of depression and the fact it is one of the most treatable afflictions that we have. The most common conversation I have as a pastor with people is about depression. So the irony is that when we feel most alone there are many in the same boat. But are there times when being alone is something we do to ourselves?
I think of John’s response. When he comes to Jesus and draws this line in the sand and says, “There was this guy casting out demons in your name, but we don’t know him, so we told him to go away and to cut it out.” Do we do similar things in shaping our community? Do we draw lines around denomination, religion, nation, race, class, age, stage of life? There is much to be gained by being community with those who are like us. That’s the reason for support groups for addiction and grief. And yet, there’s something to be learned from being with those who are very unlike us.
When we lived in Palestine, that was part of the nature of the community there. These were multi-generational families, three or four generations living together under one roof. You would see rebar everywhere because you would not finish the top of your house so you could add another story for the next generation. We would go over and visit with people and watch Arab pop music videos with families: grandmothers, little children, all watching these music videos and commenting from their own perspective. It meant something to be together.
And there in that small village, there was a mixture of Muslims and Christians living together. We also learned about how faiths can cross lines that we might not otherwise assume. Jeries was the patriarch of one of the families we visited regularly. He was a Greek orthodox member of the church. One day when we were visiting, there was a Muslim family visiting them, friends of theirs, and they had brought a very, very sick child. As we were having a conversation and drinking coffee together, out of the corner of our eye, we noticed that Jeries had gotten up and was standing over this family and was mumbling some kind of prayer to himself as he was making the sign of the cross over this Muslim child. Perhaps it’s not ours to draw the lines as clearly as we as we think we should.
The bottom line is that Jesus is often speaking about, and living out, breaking down barriers; inclusion; bringing others into community. We saw this last week as he held this child in his arms, one who would have been disdained. Jesus was often bringing those who were disregarded into community, whether they were Samaritans or Gentiles or lepers or tax collectors. Those who were rejected at the time were often included in the community as far as Jesus was concerned. Jesus is redeemer for Christ does not belong to Presbyterians alone. Christ is not the redeemer for Christians alone; for Americans alone; for Tech fans alone. The challenge is for us to live our lives in ways that make that real.
Do you have anyone in your life that you would consider a friend who is unlike you? However you want to define that. And if you don’t, why not? The challenge from the gospel is moving us beyond our comfort zones, to reach out to others in relationships. There are plenty of opportunities right here in our congregation to do just that. We are involved with the Druid Hills Night Shelter, the Interfaith Outreach Home, AMIS and befriending an international student, supporting the Knauerts as they live and work in Brazil. Let’s be clear: it’s not about what we do for them but about what we do together as we learn more about each other and come into relationship with those that we might think are against us. The truth is that we have just drawn lines in a place that Jesus doesn’t necessarily agree with.
I also want to be clear to say: if you’re feeling lonely, you’re not the only one. What we can see from this text, from those who have been put on the outside, is that God wants to hold you close; Christ wants to walk with you. Is that too abstract? If we know anything about Jesus, he wants us to make it real and tangible. He wants us to give those cups of cold water, to remove stumbling blocks. So if you feel that this applies to you, this is not a time to be self-reliant; instead, it is time to reach out. Pastor Tiffany and I are here to listen to you, to be with you. Maybe you have to have a friend or a counselor, someone you know that has been reliable in the past, maybe it’s time to reach out to them again to let them know how you’re hurting.
Friends, Christ is with us. Christ includes us. Christ takes us into his arms and heals us and says, “Follow me.”
In my sermon this past Sunday, I suggested that folks might try a daily practice of devotional, even the first 5 minutes of each day.
Special thanks to my friend Linda Hawthorne for this site, which I have now bookmarked for future reference. For a person who finds themselves “plugged in” much of the day, this is a great resource:
Last week, we talked about this town Caesarea Philippi to the Northeast of the Galilee. It was a retreat area where the disciples were getting away. And it was there that Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people say that I am and who do you say that I am?” It’s Peter who is the one who knows and says, “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God.” We talked about how important it is for us to get perspective, to step away from things for a little bit, to listen, most importantly, to the voice of God and to the voice of others as we see what is that is facing us in our lives.
There’s a caution about perspective which comes from a story by Rabbi Edwin Friedman. Rabbi Friedman was not only a congregational rabbi, but also a very fine family therapist. The story is of a fly and a moth. The fly is buzzing up against a window that is cracked open, but the fly is up too far and is buzzing randomly. The moth sees all this and says to the fly, “May I interrupt you?”
And the fly says, “I don’t have time. My lifespan is only a day, so I’ve got to get out of here!”
“Well, I just want to suggest that if you back up, you can see where the window is open.”
“I don’t have time for your nonsense – I’m in a hurry!”
“Well, from my perspective, it’s easy to see the way out.”
“I told you, I’m too busy to stop and back away.”
“May I suggest that you take a systematic approach, starting in the upper left hand corner, and then moving down, and across?”
“There’s no time for planning! Time is running out!”
This goes on for some time. Finally, after a few hours, it starts to get dark outside. The fly remains frantic and keeps complaining to the moth. But the moth has stopped listening because of a glow in the distance. Suddenly, the moth heads out of the window and straight into a flame. Poof!
It might be easy for us to get perspective about someone else’s life and loose perspective about our own. So there is that caution of needing to listen to the voices of others and the wisdom of God that comes through others. Perspective can’t be gained alone. We can’t get perspective by ourselves.
And neither can perspective stand alone. Once we’ve got some sense of the bigger picture, it can’t stand by itself. And that is our conversation today: having the right priorities – what it is we do once we have that perspective.
There’s an irony in the word “priorities.” “Priority” comes from a Latin word “prior”, which means first. So in a sense, to say “first priority” is redundant, and to say, “second priority” is ridiculous. Priorities really boil down to one thing. It’s like the story Victor Borge tells of the couple that is standing in line at the airline desk, heading off on vacation. The husband says to the wife, “Honey, I really wish we brought the piano on this trip.”
The wife says, “Are you crazy? We’ve sixteen bags! You want to bring the piano?”
“But the tickets are on the piano.”
If you forget the first thing, the other priorities might not make much of a difference.
We can learn something about our priority by looking at the text today. Jesus is teaching the disciples and yet again, they are not getting what he’s about. This is what’s wonderful about the disciples: they make it so much easier to be a Christian, because they don’t get it, and they’re right there with Jesus. He’s telling them what is before them, what it means to be Messiah. There will be betrayal, and death, and resurrection. They are so afraid and baffled by what he’s saying that they don’t even ask any questions.
And as they move along, from Caesarea Phillipi to Capernaum, they approach that northern tip of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum was the hometown of Peter. The home in the story is Peter’s home. If you go to Capernaum today, there’s no village there; just ruins. But these ruins are of a church from the fifth century. And inside that church is an even smaller church that was what they would call a “home church.” And inside that is in even smaller church that may have been Peter’s home. This is all literally yards from the Sea. This was the home base for the disciples. They continued to return to Capernaum as they moved along the coast of the Sea of Galilee.
It’s there that Jesus asks them, “What were you talking about on the road?” It turns out that they were acting like kids on a road trip: “I’m better than you.” “But I’m older.” “Yeah, but I’m stronger.” “But I caught more fish.” They had forgotten what this is all about. At the time, the understanding was that the Messiah was going to unite the Jewish people and lead a military coup to kick out the Roman occupiers and reestablish the throne of King David right there in Jerusalem. So when Peter says, “You’re the Messiah,” and Jesus says, “You’ve got it,” they seem to stop listening. So the question they start asking is, “Who’s going to get to sit next to the throne of power?”
Jesus has been teaching them for the past few days along their journey from Caesarea Phillipi through the Galilee and down to Capernaum that what it means to be Messiah is not what they think.
Maybe they’re living in denial; perhaps they’re just missing the point. So Jesus tries to make it as tangible for them as possible. As they’re sitting there, Jesus gives this wonderful speech that flips everything on its head, that’s not about being first, but being last; it’s not about being served, but about serving. You can imagine the disciples’ reaction to all of this – a collective “huh?” So Jesus takes this child, and says, “Let me put it this way: whoever welcomes this child has got it right.” A child would have been the most vulnerable member of society. They were not of high regard in that first century. So what he’s saying is: “If you welcome in those whom society has dismissed, then you’ve got it. It’s not about being the most powerful. It’s not about being the greatest. It’s about recognizing who’s left out; who’s the weakest; who’s the despised.” The disciples seem to have placed themselves first. They have missed the whole point. They have forgotten, and even though they’re following Jesus, it has become all about which one of them is going to be the greatest.
It’s like the story of a family traveling in a cross-country car trip to Yellowstone National Park. It’s this long car trip, so they’ve given the son in the back seat a lot of things to occupy his time. But he has gone through all the DVDs and has a read all the books. He is simply bored out of his wits. So they start playing the license plate game, collecting how many different states they can see. By the time they get to Yellowstone Park, they’ve got 24. And they think, “This is great! We have killed the time and have gotten about half the states.” So they arrive at the Park and are ready to check in and get something to eat. But the son says, “Can’t I stay in the parking lot?”
“No,” they tell him, it’s time to go inside.”
“But I’ve only got 24. I’ve got to get the rest.”
They’re driving around, looking at Old Faithful, while the son is back in the parking lot: “Pennsylvania. Got it!” He got all of the States, but he missed Yellowstone. It’s like missing the forest for the license plates.
There are times when we don’t get, when we’re focused on the wrong thing. To have priority, to have our priorities in order, means to have the very thing that we need to put the center of our lives. Recognizing the tension in the word “priority”, I would like to suggest that we should each have three priorities: God, self, and others.
Put God first. If “priority” really means only the first thing, then perhaps it makes sense to stop with God. The question then becomes, can we segment God off? If we make God a priority rather than the priority, we have said that there are things in our lives that don’t involve God. Do we really believe that God is sovereign? Do we really believe that Jesus is Lord? If so, there is no area of our life which we can separate from God. Do we make room for God, though?
Someone wise once said that you can tell a person’s priorities by looking at their checkbook. What does your checkbook say about you? Do you make room for God there? I don’t just mean church. And I don’t not mean church. But it’s about God’s desires. Do our financial priorities make room for what it is that god desires in the world? And it’s not just about money. It’s about time. Does God get that first bit of our time, those first fruits of our harvest? Or does God get the leftovers that are shoved back in the freezer? Do you make time for prayer? Bible study? Reading theological books and devotional texts?
I’m convinced that if we put God first, if we really take that word “priority” literally, and put God as the priority, all other things, all other responsibilities, will simply fall into place. And I also want to hear a very clearly that this idea of putting God first, making space for God, making room for God, is not just about you. It’s about me, too. I’m preaching to myself as much to anyone else. The emails, the meetings, all of the responsibilities and the busy-ness of ministry can sweep aside the very reason that we’re doing ministry in the first place. So I’d like to suggest a small step. What would it look like to spend the first five minutes of every day with God? It could be praying, reading Scripture, reflecting, sitting, whatever it is that focuses you to making space for God in your life. Start with that and see where it leads you.
I’m also convinced that putting God first then helps us understand those other priorities of self and others. It’s not easy to say which of these, self or others, ought to have priority. Some of us have this sense in our very bones that we ought to neglect ourselves because we don’t matter all that much. Maybe that means we need to reengage love of self. For others of us, we were always taught to put ourselves first without any regard for others. So maybe we need to put others first in order to put ourselves in proper perspective.
In either case, we can take that lesson of the child in Jesus’ arms. If we put that child first, if we put the most vulnerable of society – whether it’s ourselves or those around us – then we’ll begin to get it right. And part of each one of us is more vulnerable than we’d like to admit. Give yourself time. Take care of yourself. And for those who are outside the circle, those on society’s margins, those who are like the children of the first century, ignored and forgotten, make time for them. Spend time on behalf of others so that we might serve God.
Can we put ourselves in the footsteps of the disciples as they wandered those ancient lands? Can we be sure that Jesus goes before us? Can we leave behind that mountain retreat and follow him wherever it is that he leads? Can we trust him to lead us where it is that we need to go? Can we welcome him as we welcome those we’d rather not – those who are vulnerable and remind us how vulnerable we are; those who are on the outside and remind us that we’re not as great as we might think we are?
The life of faith is a journey. We step forward some times; other times we step back. My hope is that our priority can be in God alone, that we might follow Christ all the days of our lives.
I consider myself blessed to have known Tim, but as we put his service together, I discovered that I didn’t know a great deal about him. And then I realized something. Every time I would go to visit him at Atlanta Cancer Care, the conversation would begin about his condition: the latest news from the doctors, the details and difficulties of travel. But it was never long before Tim had successfully turned the conversation to be about me. And the more I’ve learned about Tim over the past few days, the more I see that I was not unique. There were times that this selflessness could frustrate his family, since others could jump ahead in the line, but as I heard them talk about it, I know that they know it as a gift that was uniquely his.