A Pentecost People

It’s like we threw a party, but nobody got the invitation…

Elizabeth and I moved into a third story walk-up apartment on the Southside of Chicago. We shared the stairwell with five other apartments, but had not met any of the other residents yet. So we decided that we ought to take the lead. A couple of weeks after we moved in, we threw a party, inviting our neighbors to come upstairs. It was scheduled to start at 6pm.

At about 6:30…well, you know that feeling when you’re the only ones at your party? That’s where we were, beginning to realize we were going to eating spinach and artichoke dip three meals a day for about a week.

Fortunately, that’s when a knock came at the door. It was the couple who lived across the hall. Not long after, another knock – the elderly bachelor who lived downstairs. Then the graduate student across the hall from him, and the retired couple from the first floor – all in all, five out of the six apartments were represented. The party was a success!

We lived in that place for seven years. And in that time, we shared lives with those neighbors: relationships came to an end, others started. There were weddings and births and deaths and moves. It was, in short, our little community near the corner of 55^th and South Cornell. But that first party was the only time that we were all in the same room together.

Our apartment was nothing special; in fact, it was a cozy little one bedroom. And so, whenever we had a party, we had to pull out extra chairs (or anything resembling chairs, for that matter) so that everyone who wanted to sit could. We had set up our apartment for two people; when more were there, even for just a short period of time – a few hours or a few days – we moved furniture around, borrowed if we had to. In short, we made room.

When I read the Pentecost story, I wonder if God was at work doing something similar with the disciples: making room. After Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, their numbers were down to eleven, and they holed themselves up back in the Upper Room that had become their familiar respite. After the resurrection, when Jesus appeared to them and ate with them and spoke with them and stayed with them for almost a month and a half, they decided that maybe their story wasn’t over. And so, after Jesus left them, they gathered once again in the Upper Room as he had told them to do, and the awaited instructions. While they waited, they decided they needed one more to take Judas’ place, with that honor going to Matthias.

And still they waited…perhaps wondering if anybody else was coming to their party. Then Pentecost happened, and the church was born. Wind burst through the windows; fire lapped on their heads; languages filled the air; and Peter takes the opportunity to give his first sermon to the gathered crowd. Apparently, three thousand people were baptized that day because of what they saw and heard and experienced. This little party of eleven, then twelve, had suddenly outgrown the confines of that Upper Room – the celebration had to be taken to the streets!

I read all of this, and then I look at the state of churches today all over the country. I look around our own Sanctuary here at Oglethorpe Presbyterian. Unlike the disciples, we’ve got room – plenty of room – too much room. Sure, on Easter we’re overflowing. On Christmas Eve, we’re at capacity. On Preschool Sunday, we’re packed to the gills. But the rest of the year, for the most part, we could all fit in one of our seating sections – tightly, mind you. But we certainly don’t have a problem with space…or is that our problem?

Our attendance records go back fifteen years. And in that time, the trend is downward, year after year after year. Even way back in those heady days of the late 90’s, we were under half-capacity most of the year.

We’re not alone in this challenge, either, by any stretch. It’s the same problem that faces thousands of churches all over the country: a sanctuary built for 800 now seats 80. A worship space that could hold three hundred sees an average attendance of 15 or 16. Both of these examples are actually in Presbyterian churches here in Atlanta; in thriving parts of Atlanta. This situation, sadly, seems to be much more rule than exception. It’s as though we live in a six-bedroom house permanently set up for a party, when a one-bedroom apartment would be more than enough.

So, Happy Pentecost! Nothing like slogging your way to church on a rainy Sunday morning to get a rousing, energizing, feel-good sermon, huh?

My point, though, is that I don’t think we are all that different from those early disciples. I have heard theory after theory about why the church is on the decline. There are those who want to point theological or political fingers: the church is too conservative, or too liberal. Or they blame worship styles: the music is too stuffy and the language is out of touch, or it’s trying to hard to be “relevant” and ends up abandoning age-old truths…Having been in a church professional for almost twenty years now, I’m convinced that none of those things is much of a factor at all.

And I think Oglethorpe Presbyterian is a perfect example. I really do hope you’ll stick around for lunch afterwards, because the first part of our conversation is to hear the results of the Church Assessment Tool survey we did just a few weeks back. And there is much – much – to celebrate about what God is doing here! And I know I keep returning to this topic, but your support of the Capital Campaign continues to show that this church has a place not just for the present, but on into God’s future as well! That’s not to minimize the challenges that we have, or to deny their existence. They’re there, all right; but we know they’re there. And I know I say this every year, but your session leadership is amazing, gifted, and dedicated to discerning God’s desires as we move forward as a church. It’s almost enough to make me become a Presbyterian!

But this is where my party metaphor starts to come apart. We’ve sent out invitations to the neighbors, but they’re not coming. We want to walk through those pivotal life moments together – births, deaths, marriages, divorces, celebrations, tragedies. And we want the community to know that we are here to walk alongside them in these moments. As any of you who have been there know, it’s what we do best! And yet, the time has come. It’s 6:30, and we sit here, looking at each other, wondering why nobody came.

The truth is that the rules have changed. The word is different. To use a technology analogy, we keep sending invitations through the mail when everyone is checking their inbox for an evite. I think the church’s decline is as simple as this: we are sitting in the Upper Room, waiting for a knock at the door; but really, it’s time to take the celebration to the streets!

For the disciples, it took the storm force of wind, the interruption of fire, and a good dose of linguistic chaos to get them off their be-hinds (as my grandmother would’ve said) and recognize that the Spirit was there so they could pick up where Jesus left off. What’s it gonna take for us to do the same?

I’ve got good news and bad news: the bad news is that we’re probably not gonna get the same kind of signs they did. There will likely be no burning bush, no Red Sea parting, no sky splitting open, no dove descending. But the good news is that the Spirit never left us – God is still here! It never left us! I’m just not sure we’re paying close enough attention, or that we’re able to filter out the stimuli that constantly bombard our senses long enough just to hear the wind blow…

Friends, the truth is: it’s not even our party to begin with! Maybe we have forgotten that, or maybe it happened so long ago that we don’t remember, but the celebration started long before we arrived on the scene. Somebody bothered to include us – our parents, a friend, a beloved pastor – because they knew that it was God’s party all along! Do we know that? Can we stop sending invitations and, instead, become invitations, taking it to the streets? And can we remember what the party was about in the first place – not a building, no; but the host, who meets us where we are!

My prayer today is that God would light a fire – not on our heads, but under our be-hinds, sending us out to be Christ’s deeds of power, living invitations to a world that needs healing, more than it knows. May it be so!

Holy Ground

I wrote this song six months ago inspired by the story of Moses and the burning bush. Of all the things I have learned about the story through the years, one comment from a Bible study group back in seminary has stuck with me: when you take off your shoes, you’re gonna stay a while.

The lyrics are simple:
Take off your shoes and stay around.
Take off your shoes and stay around
For the land on which you stand is holy ground.

Throughout our weekly chapel with the preschoolers this year, I’ve shared a lot of music, and so it seemed right to do so on Preschool Sunday.

An Easter People: Part 3

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Love is the mark of the church. Love, if we take Jesus at his word, is what sets Easter people apart from the crowds.

This lesson from John’s gospel takes place during the Last Supper. In addition to introducing the practices of communion and foot washing, John records Jesus’ words as a kind of lengthy farewell address. And these few verses lie at its heart: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

It is also from these verses that our Holy Week celebration of Maundy Thursday gets its name. “Maundy” is an Old English word that means, quite simply, “commandment”. We might call it Commandment Thursday, which sounds kind of off-putting, frankly…except that the command, in this case, is to love one another.

Love is what marks Easter people.

We have been using this season of Easter, the seven weeks between Easter Sunday and Pentecost, to explore what it means to be Easter people. To follow Jesus means to live beyond the good news of Easter, to know that Maundy Thursday is not where the story ends, commandment or not. It’s why ancient Christians chose Sunday as the day of worship: the seventh day was for resting, but the first day was a reminder that life begins again at Easter. It’s why the font has eight sides, as those who are baptized are ushered into this new, Easter life.

New life, and the love that marks it, is what shapes Easter people.

Is the church known as a place of love?

This past week, I attended my cousin’s funeral. He lived well into his 90’s, and so it was an opportunity for celebration. He was a devout Catholic, and so, as was fitting, his church held a memorial mass. They were very kind about the fact that communion was not offered to all, but it was still made clear that non-Catholics were not welcome to receive. Though I am not a Catholic, I appreciate the reasons for this practice. And yet, as the priest consecrated the elements, it was Jesus’ words of invitation, not the politely worded doctrine in the bulletin, which rang in my ears: “Take, eat, all of you…”

The disconnect between promise and execution seemed so obvious. And yet, it’s easy game to find fault with others when we look from outside. Where, I wondered, do we cause those same kinds of disconnects? Is there language we use, our own Presby-speak code, which leaves others wanting a church in-ear translator? When we say, “greet the session in the Narthex after the benediction,” greet the who in the which after the what now?

And what about our communion practices? Back in Reformation days, if you wanted to receive, you needed a chip as proof that you had done adequate preparation. It was a kind of a confession-lite. When I was a child, we were required to take a communion readiness class so that we would know what all the fuss was about. Today, the requirement is that you must be baptized – it doesn’t matter what kind of baptism, but baptism nonetheless – in order to receive communion. And even that is up-for-grabs, and I think rightly so.

After all, how many of us can explain in detail what it is that communion means? A show of hands from all who can explain Calvin’s understanding of the “real, spiritual presence.” Or is it enough to know that, by participating, you belong to something bigger than yourself?

My wife Elizabeth tells the story of growing up Episcopalian. As a child, before she was deemed ready to receive, she would go up for communion with her mother. When she got the priest’s blessing instead of the bread and cup, she would scream her head off…because whatever she may or may not have grasped of any kind of doctrine, she knew she was being left out of something special. And, isn’t that its own disconnect between preaching and practice?

And speaking of disconnects, how about a lengthy explanation of communion practices on a Sunday on which we are not going to have communion?

But I digress…the point in all of this is Jesus’ command to love: a love that spreads the table wider than we can even imagine. After all, when Jesus broke bread in that Upper Room, he even served it to the one who went out to betray him. There is no greater love than a love that includes those who would do us in. Who among us is willing to love that broadly?

What does that love look like in our lives? Not just any love, mind you, but a love that reflects the love of Jesus himself, a love that is willing to go to any length, even to the cross, to open wide the gates of the kingdom?

Last Sunday, as the people of Boston were still reeling from the marathon bombings and high-stakes police chase, I came across an article written by Boston native Michael Rogers, who is about to be ordained as a Jesuit priest. Writing an open letter to suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, he penned words that, to me, demonstrated the kind of love of which Jesus speaks:

I am glad that you are going to prison, and I hope that you will have many long years there…I hope that no one I love will ever be threatened by you again, but I can’t hate you. I can’t hate you because whatever you brought into Boston was enough hate for a good long while. I won’t and can’t hate any more. I can’t hate you because I remember being nineteen. I thought many things were a good idea which weren’t. I never would have went where you were with that, but I was certainly not an adult…I can’t hate you because, even though you did unspeakable things…somehow you are still my brother and your death can never be my gain…I don’t and can’t hate you. I will love and pray for you, because somehow your sin was turned for good, and my community and the people I love will only be stronger in the end.

What does it look like to love with the love of Jesus here at Oglethorpe Presbyterian? Where is it that we are being commanded to love beyond the barriers we may have constructed? Where is it that you are being commanded to love without limits? Is there a neighbor or a friend who needs to know how loved they are? Is there someone in your life whom you know is aching in loneliness, who needs to know that they, too, belong at the table? Is there a kindness you can offer to rebuke spite and the ill it intends?

Love, the love of Jesus, is what marks us as the church. It is what sets us apart as Easter people. It is what ushers in the new heaven and the new earth. Are we a people of love?

An Easter People: Part 1

Sometimes we need to go back to the beginning.

Our lesson from John this morning comes at the very end of the gospel. Because of this, we tend to see it in the light of “the end” rather than “the beginning”. Thomas is there, the one who doubted and then lost that doubt when he touched Christ’s wounds. Peter is there, not only taking part in the grilled fish meal, but also getting grilled himself. After all, this follows his three-fold denial; it’s not surprising in the least that Jesus would ask him three times, “Do you love me?”

Seen this way, the story appears to be one of redemption. Thomas is given yet another chance to see and experience Jesus in the flesh. Peter, though momentarily humiliated by Jesus’ questions, ends up being elevated once again as shepherd of the flock and tender of the sheep. He is forced to face his embarrassing failings; but soon experiences the outrageous grace and mercy of the one he abandoned. We can only imagine what would happen had Judas decided to hang around…

In the end, though, I think there’s something much more going on here, a reminder that sometimes we need to go back to the beginning.

Nathanael is there. He doesn’t get to make many appearances in John’s gospel; primarily here, and at the beginning. In chapter one, Nathanael appears as Philip’s friend. And once told about Jesus, his reply is the dismissive, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He is convinced, though, once he goes and sees.

The other gospels recount the call of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who are told to leave their nets, bring their fishing prowess with them, and follow Jesus. And here they are again, back to the beginning, returning to the sea to ply their trade.

And then there’s Simon Peter. He was born Simon; but Jesus called him Peter, a new name to remind him of the solid foundation of faith that Jesus saw within him. And in John’s gospel, the renaming happens where? In the very beginning. But notice what happens in our lesson from today. The narrator calls him Simon Peter throughout. But when Jesus addresses him, he is “Simon, son of John.” Part of this, I’m sure, is to underscore how Simon’s faith faltered in the face of Jesus’ suffering and his own fears. Once again, Peter is reminded of his failings…before Jesus again embraces him and sends him off to lead in his absence. I think this name play is also a hint from Jesus that, in order to move forward, sometimes we need to go back to the beginning.

Our lives in faith should reflect this, too, going back to the beginning. We schedule our lives so that, one day a week, we worship and re-center our lives around the lessons of Scripture and their meaning in our lives. We come to this table again and again to be fed and sated, and to be reminded of what that feeding costs. And we also return to this font, as we do again today. And as we do, we will baptize two children, yes, but we also mark, remember, and even anticipate the moment each of us entered the family of faith, passing through the waters and into promise.

Sometimes we need to go back to the beginning.

I think that’s part of what we see in the gospel lesson today. The disciples are terrified. When Jesus is crucified, they head back to that Upper Room, and lock the doors. And they keep them locked. For Jesus to visit them after the resurrection, he has to appear – twice – with the locked doors trying to keep him out. And now, even having experienced the resurrected Christ, they have gone back home, to the Galilee. It could be that they’re doing it because Jesus modeled it; after all, Jesus got away from the crowds every now and then to retreat and pray. That could be what they are doing. On the other hand, it could be that, yet again, they have retreated in fear, going back to what they know how to do best. It seems that they have gone back to the beginning.

What does that mean for us? What does it mean for us to go back to the beginning? I may be wrong, but I can’t help but see that this is what we are in the midst of doing with our capital campaign. In some ways, we have hit reset on our building: new roof, new HVAC up and running, new doors on the way, and more projects to come.

I also think there is wisdom in the fact that our campaign intentionally included elements beyond bricks and mortar. The Church Assessment Tool is just the first step – and here, I’m going to make a shameless plug: if you haven’t filled out the survey yet, please do it today. It’s an important moment for us, as we move out of the momentum of our campaign and look toward what comes next: what is it? What is it that God is calling us to do, as part of this family of faith? As we sift through the results of your input, I trust that the Spirit will speak clearly of what is to come.

In other words, in order to move forward, we need to take this moment to go back to the beginning, to the basics – to touch base, to assess, to pray, and to trust.

What about you? Where is your beginning? What is your touchstone, your place, your experience, your prayer that grounds you so that you can move forward? Here’s the amazing thing about it: even if we, like the disciples head back to that place out of fear, the risen Christ meets us there. We can’t even lock him out, or set sail to escape his presence. He is there, in the midst of us. He is there, patiently waiting on the shore. He is there, ready to confront us, rename us, and call us forward into newness of life! Will we be ready? Even if we’re not, will we go anyway?

Amen.

Jesus Rises

We are called to be a people of second chances…

This very idea undergirds all that we say as a community of faith: forgiveness, grace, and mercy are our watchwords. At our community Sunrise Service this morning, we heard about the incredible recovery ministry at Brookhaven United Methodist, whose whole purpose is give a second chance to the rawest of the raw, to those who have fallen to addiction’s alluring draw.

And yet, that very notion, that mercy and grace are gifts to all, is downright countercultural. It seems like we live in a time when the very idea of giving someone a second chance is treated as a kind of moral weakness. I’m not sure that’s a particularly unique characteristic of this moment and place in time, but it does feel as though we are more aware of the clay feet of our cultural idols than ever before.

One manifestation is our cultural obsession with scandal. And our public figures give us plenty of reason to be scandalized! In politics, we can hearken back to the moral failings of Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich. More recently, we can point to New Jersey’s Jim McGreevey and his affair with his male security adviser, or South Carolina’s Mark Sanford surprising us with the news that the Appalachian Trail goes all the way to Argentina. It seems that our public figures’ lust for attention turns out not to be the only lust in their lives. And if we’re honest, we tend to revel in hypocrisy that their private lives reveal.

And it’s not just politics where these things happen. The church, sadly, is home to its share of scandalous public secrets. Whether we go back to the very public collapses of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart, or to the more recent embarrassments of Ted Haggard out in Colorado or Eddie Long here in Atlanta, it appears as though those who pride themselves on telling everyone else how to live are the very ones with secret lives going against everything that they preach.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “There are no second acts in American lives,” a quote which has become famous for being famously wrong. Clinton and Gingrich are still political forces in our country. Mark Sanford is making a comeback in South Carolina politics. Tammy Faye had a successful secular TV career. Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, and Jimmy Swaggart are still in ministry, though less publicly. Eddie Long still pastors New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, though he remains under a shroud of suspicion. Second acts, actually, seem to be par for the course. And those second acts tend to look a lot like the first acts, leaving us to wonder if anyone ever learns anything when they fall from grace.

And yet, as our Biblical history reminds us, we are called to be a people of second chances…

Peter is, perhaps, one of the clearest examples of second chances. In the garden late Thursday night, Peter was valiantly defending his Christ. But in courtyard early Friday morning, he was already denying him. Falls from grace don’t get much more obvious than that. It may not as shocking as Judas’ betrayal, but it is spectacularly galling in its own special way. And yet, by the time we read of Peter in our lesson from Acts, he has been emboldened by his encounter with the risen Christ, and has risen to become a pillar of the early church. Even so, he still gets it wrong; and so we find him here, admitting the error of his ways. He had been zealously preaching the gospel as though it were an exclusive club, denying a place to Gentiles in favor of dietary and ritual purity. It takes a parting of the skies and the very presence of God to convert him. And our lesson this morning finds him telling the gathered crowd: “God shows no partiality.” All may take part in the promises of the gospel, regardless of parentage or tribe.

Given his personal history, it seems fitting that Peter is the bearer of this message.

Peter made a cameo appearance in the Easter story as well, as one of two disciples who sprint to the empty tomb. But it seems that neither understood the full extent of what just happened. That role, instead, is left to Mary Magdalene. She is the first witness to the risen Christ. She is another in a long line of Biblical characters who know what it means to be given a second chance.

We are called to be a people of second chances.

Here at Oglethorpe Presbyterian, we love to get involved in ministries that live out those second chances. In our Habitat builds, we partner with other churches and new homeowners to help them move from the challenges of poverty to economic sustainability. In our Food Pantry, we give groceries to families who are not on anyone’s radar screen, and so are most in danger of slipping through the system’s cracks. And at Journey shelter, we take an active part in the lives of men who find themselves with nowhere else to go, journeying alongside them as they move from the streets to self-sufficiency.

But here’s our Easter morning reality-check: are we really any different? We may have advantages that give us cushion from the kind of immediate needs that these ministries serve. But the truth is, deep down, each of us needs to know that second chances are possible. We may be fortunate enough not to face the kind of humiliation that public figures do; but all of us, in ways great and small, need to know that life does not end in our moments of failure.

We live with the legacy of broken relationships: parent, child, neighbor, friend, husband, wife…We let down those whom we love. We do the very thing we know we should not; and we fail to do the very thing we know we should. We speak carelessly, leaving deep wounds and vicious scars. We lust. We desire. We covet. We objectify and dehumanize. We are Peter, denying Christ. We are Mary Magdalene, living in the shadows. We are people who need second chances, sometimes more than we are willing to admit.

And here’s the thing: they exist! Second chances are there for the taking! While it seems that most of the famous stories of disgrace and scandal mean only a temporary hiatus from the public eye, there are those who take their public humiliation as an opportunity to be reborn.

Those of you keeping score at home may have noticed that I mentioned Jim McGreevey earlier, but didn’t say anything about what has happened to him. An apparently forgettable documentary about his fall from grace just came out, but the story it tells is one we ought to hear. You may remember McGreevey’s resignation as governor of New Jersey in 2004, as he came clean in a press conference about his affair with a male advisor on security matters. His marriage, not surprisingly, ended in divorce, and his political career was just as dead. After intensive counseling and therapy, McGreevey wound up in seminary. He began pursuing ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. That bid was rejected, however, as his recent personal history with titles and power gave the church a good reason to be cautious, if not suspicious. But that rejection turned out to be a gift, McGreevey readily admits. Now he runs a program for women at the Hudson County jail which, it turns out, is called “Second Chance.” And as he talks about his work, he describes it in about the most religious terms I can imagine: it’s a “sacred place, a level of awareness, to try to follow God’s will in my life day in, day out.”

Do we believe in second chances? What is yours? Where is it that you can race to find, beyond all possibility, an empty tomb? Where is it that you can encounter the Jesus who rises from the dead? Where is your garden? Where is your sacred space, your reason and need to follow God’s will in your life? You may not have faced a personal scandal, but each of us knows, deep down, that we need to hear and see and believe in the promise resurrection in our lives.

The funny thing is that it has been there all along, right before our eyes! It may look like the gardener at first, but look again. Jesus rises so that we might know that our second chance is real.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Amen.

Jesus Rides

“If they were silent, the stones would shout out.”

With these words, our lesson from Luke ends today. The Pharisees call on Jesus to quiet the Palm Sunday crowds, and he gives them the kind of non-answer answer for which he has become well-known: “It wouldn’t do any good to tell them to be quiet. The rocks would keep up the noise. So why bother? Let them shout!” At the very least, this left the Pharisees scratching their heads; at worst, it gave them another excuse to ramp up their campaign against this Jesus. In any case, it was not the answer they were looking for, and was simply defiant in the face of their demand.

But what if the stones would shout? What would they say?

Those stones had borne witness to a great deal. There on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem, they had seen so much: the rise and fall of kingdoms, the celebration and promises of God, the people’s desecration of the holy covenant, the construction and destruction of temples…life, death, and everything in between. What would they say, indeed, if they were given the chance to speak?

It’s a fanciful question. Jesus rides on, the parade continues, the Pharisees plot, and the rest of the story carries on toward its dramatic finale of betrayal, murder, and miracle. All the while, the stones continue their silent vigil.

In a way, I’m reminded of the saying, “If these walls could talk…” And I’m struck by that thought today, here in this place. If these walls, if the building of Oglethorpe Presbyterian Church could talk, what would it say? This church facility, which has stood here on the corner of Lanier and Woodrow for more than six decades, what has it seen? The deep divides of segregation and racism, the changing role of women in society and in the church, the cultural battles over war and peace, current questions about faith and politics, about gender and sexuality…and through it all, the changing and diminishing role of church in the broader community. If we were commanded to silence, would these stones shout out?

It’s always a curious thing to look back on history. We have the benefit of hindsight, of course, and are tempted to judge those who came before based on what we know today. I’m reminded of the story of my grandfather, Marthame, Sr., born in 1900, who was a Presbyterian elder back in the days when being an elder was like being appointed to the Supreme Court: it was a lifetime appointment. In 1957, a delegation from the NAACP wanted to visit his church, and the session had a long, difficult discussion on the matter. I’m told that my grandfather turned the tide of the conversation by saying, “Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek…I wonder if the same can be said of black and white?” The session voted that all would be welcome to worship, regardless of skin color.

On the one hand, I’m very proud of that story: here was a man, and a stubborn man at that, in his late 50s, who was able to admit that what he had been taught his whole life might just be wrong. I struggle to do that as someone in my 40s. At the same time, if I’m honest, part of me is stunned. It had been three years since the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education in 1954; the Army had officially integrated in 1948, and had unofficially done so in 1944, when my grandfather, in his 40s, was serving in both the European and Pacific Theaters. With all that in mind, I’ve gotta admit, it doesn’t seem like that bold of a move.

If the stones could have shouted that day, what would they have said? Would they have screamed at the top of their lungs, “It’s about time!”?

That’s all well and good…but what about us? What is it that the stones, with the benefit of their eternal witness, would cry out to us today? Would they point out that we, enlightened though we might like to think of ourselves, are no different? Would they caution us that we risk the same disappointment from our own descendants for the way we have excluded or passed judgment on the GLBT community? And am I, in my 40s, forced to confront much of what I have been told my whole life, willing to do more than just raise the question?

This Palm Sunday is a curious day. March 24, 2013, marks the 33^rd anniversary of the assassination of Bishop Oscar Romero. He was killed for speaking out against the horrific treatment of the poor at the hands of the El Salvadoran government. He was slaughtered in the middle of worship, and the government took full responsibility, even bragging about it. Thirty-three years later, the Roman Catholic Church is led by a man that seems to bear Romero’s influence. He has stunned the world by making his priority for the poor a priority for the whole church. And there are quite a few who are saying, “It’s about time!”

What would the stones shout out today? Can we be silent long enough to listen? Can we give our own internal voices a break in order to hear their wisdom? Or do we really want to hear what they have to say, anyway?

I’m not sure, but on that ancient Palm Sunday, I think the stones, given their chance, would have let the Pharisees know in no uncertain terms that the very Son of God rode before them. The heavenly Messiah sat on a donkey, riding his way into Jerusalem, proclaiming the new reign of God. But instead, they missed it as holiness passed right before their eyes.

Where is that moment in our lives? What is it that we do or believe, more out of habit than anything else, that causes us to miss the shouting stones beneath our feet and the presence of holiness right under our noses? Where is it that we are in need of conversion: as individuals, as a church, as a community, as a nation, as humanity? And are we willing to risk what it means to be still enough to hear what God is saying to us today?

Jesus Prays

What would Jesus’ prayer for us be?

This past summer, we spent a great deal of time looking at the Lord’s Prayer in detail. For me, the most meaningful takeaway was that we ought to pray, and pray simply. In his model prayer, Jesus doesn’t say, “If you pray”, but “When…” And so the assumption is that we do pray. And for those of us that don’t, the most common barrier is being worried that our prayers aren’t interesting enough, or flowery enough in their prose. And so, when we peel away the centuries of tradition that have built up around this prayer, it is important to recognize what remains: a simple prayer with simple words. And that is all the model for prayer that we need.

When we pray to Jesus, the lesson is straightforward: keep it simple. But today, I want to flip the equation: what would Jesus’ prayer for us be? When Jesus looks at our lives, as individuals, as a church, what is it that Jesus desires for us?

I make no pretense to speak for God today. That’s a fool’s errand. And I make no attempt to address all that ails us. The best I can hope for is to glance off the world we live in by offering my own observations on this world. I do trust that the Spirit fills in the gap between preacher and congregation. And I trust that the still small voice within each of you will flesh out God’s desires for you in the here and now.

What would Jesus’ prayer for us be? Today, I want to touch on three things.

And the first is that we would see the Christ in others. In some ways, this is the lesson that probably undergirds all that we do as a church, and all that we do as people of God. Seeing the Christ in others is a call to compassion. It is a call to justice. It is a call to mercy and righteousness. We not only weep for the children of God that suffer; we not only reach out a hand to those who constantly live on the margins of our world; we also get angry for them, because the world can be such an unfair place.

When we learn that a close friend has been struck with an untreatable illness, or when we hear of innocents who have become casualties of war through no fault of their own, or when we see a political system that has become absurd in its theatrics and brinksmanship, our hearts break for those who suffer; and our anger rises against those who seem not to notice the result of their actions. If we ever lose sight of those who constantly live on the edge of our vision, may God have mercy on us. It was with such as these that Jesus spent the bulk of his ministry: lepers, prostitutes, murderers, children, widows, orphans. And for those of us here in Brookhaven, even though we may feel like it at times, we are rarely the ones the world has forgotten. Our own spirits are in danger if we live in a bubble with only those who are just like us.

At the same time, as hard as it may be to admit, we cannot lose sight of this: the faceless corporate CEOs whose chemicals unleash the cancers of the world, the soldiers whose bombs have taken lives they were never intended to take, the politicians who such easy fodder for mockery and revulsion, they, too, deserve the dignity of Christ within them. After all, we are not only commanded to love our neighbors, but our enemies as well. That love may take a different form, but it is still love that is required.

Underneath all of this is the fact that we need to honor the Christ within us. Loving your neighbor as yourself requires loving yourself. And so, the first prayer: see the Christ in others.

The second prayer is that we would trust in God’s abundance. So often, we seem to live our lives as though we live in fear of scarcity when the Scriptures speak most often of God’s rampant generosity. Think of the sower who goes out, casting seeds this way and that. Some fall on good soil, most don’t. Beyond the question of what makes for good soil is the fact that God has way more seeds than there is soil to receive them. It reminds me of the image of the woman walking a worn path to the well from which she draws water daily. The pot she uses is cracked; so much so that by the time she gets home, half of the water is gone. And yet, as a result, the path itself grows with the abundance of well-watered earth. There is always more than we think.

When we launched our capital campaign this Fall, the biggest question we had was, “Can we do this?” And I was one of those asking the question. In the end, not only did our stewardship look exactly the same as the past few years, but we discovered an additional $350,000 out there – so far. Not everyone can give, I know. Each of our circumstances is different. Those of us on fixed incomes and with battered savings in a rough economy are doing what we can, I know. And at the same time, as a community, we clearly underestimated the riches of God’s blessings in our midst and how much more we had to share than we ever knew.

Where else are we living practices of scarcity? Where else do we keep our lights hidden away rather than letting them illuminate our surroundings? I have often heard it said that Oglethorpe Presbyterian Church is the best-kept secret in Brookhaven. Why is it a secret? Who ever told us that we shouldn’t talk about it? This isn’t Fight Club! When it comes to Jesus, is mum the word? Are we worried that more people will water down what makes this church special? If so, then we would do well to hear this prayer again: trust in God’s abundance.

And the third prayer is that we would rest in the presence of the Spirit. Or, to say it in a less churchy way, may we get some sleep.

As silly as that might sound, and as much as you might think my subtext is how much I hate springing forward, I’m actually quite serious about this. It’s my conviction that we are a sleep-deprived society, living with all of the dis-ease and disease that this deprivation brings. Whether it’s hustling between three jobs to make ends meet, or working our fingers to the bone at the one job that expects more of us than we could ever give, we are working ourselves sick. We get up too early. We stay up too late. We go on vacation, but we still answer emails and field phone calls. We are tired. We don’t think straight. And we still don’t manage to cross off everything on our “to do” list.

Make no mistake: I’m not speaking as one who has this figured out by any stretch, but rather as a fellow struggler. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we might not even realize it when it happens to us. Are we really trapped? Or are there choices we make that trap us: mixing up our priorities, confusing what we want with what we need, our inability to say “no”? And what example are we setting for our children? What are we expecting of them by giving them more to do in a day than is reasonable to expect? Their brains aren’t even fully formed yet. Sleep is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. It’s the way God designed our bodies so that they can heal and strengthen themselves. Even Jesus slept. Right there in the boat, even when the storm was raging, Jesus slept. Friends, the storms are always raging. We can always find a fire to put out. We can always find more to do. But God created other people, too. The fate of the world is not on your shoulders.

May we see the Christ in others; may we trust in God’s abundance; and may we rest in the presence of the Spirit. What is Jesus’ prayer for you today?