A Few Sacred Crumbs...

Harmonia sacra, a few sacred crumbs, and we are a scared people. - Geoffrey Hill

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Sermon on the Baptism of Ephraim Edmund Pruitt

Text: Acts 8:26-40

Baptism is a beautiful thing. Babies are already rather lovely, and I am completely unbiased in saying that Ephraim is quite handsome and that he looks quite handsome today.

Methodists are not the only Christians who baptize infants, but not all Christians do baptize infants and I think that this important to remember. On first glance, our reading from today seems to point against the baptism of infants, but we will get to that later.

There are two main ways of looking at Baptism. One views Baptism as coming from the initiative of the person seeking to be baptized. The other looks at baptism as coming from God. Since the Reformation of the 16th century, this has been a continuous debate within and between Christian churches. That is, between infant baptism and believer’s baptism.

In Pennsylvania in the 18th century, one story of the creation of the Brethren in Christ denomination that the Ginder’s come from, is that the Brethren in Christ believed that baptism should take place in moving water while the United Brethren believed that baptism could be in still water. Part of this divide went to an understanding of Baptism in Scripture as taking place in Jordan. Another part, though, was that The Brethren in Christ were located next to the Susquehanna while the United Brethren did not have a river near by.

Officially, this what the Southern Baptist Church says about Baptism:

Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour.

Here, baptism is an act of obedience and symbol. Ironically, Methodists believe that Baptism is more than this.

In order to understand why we baptize infants, it is important to realize why we baptize anyone to begin with and so we look at Philip and the Ethiopian.

[Retell story of Acts 8:26-40] - [look at the scripture and how a eunuch who can’t reproduce is baptized]

To hear the Good News of Jesus Christ we must be listening. We must also realize that we live in a world in need of good news.

There is brokenness in this world. We see the brokenness in sickness, in death, in sin, in pride, in lust, and on and on.

Original Sin, as the articles of religion say, “is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.”

Original sin describes our weakness and need, it describes the brokenness of a creation we know to have been created good.

Yet, as it says in the UMC Book of Resolutions,

“While we have turned from God, God has not abandoned us. Instead, God graciously and continuously seeks to restore us to that loving relationship for which we were created, to make us into the persons that God would have us be.”

Grace is present with all of us even through the curse of sin.

In baptism, God washes away the stain of original sin. It is grace. It is gift. We are made one with Christ Jesus.

“You were buried with him through baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” Colossians 2:12

We who know God are called not to just be nice to people but to make disciples and baptize them.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Matthew 28:18-20

Jesus never excluded Children, “Let the children come unto me for to them belong the kingdom of God.” The kingdom Jesus speaks of is not simply a future kingdom but a present one. The kingdom of God is present in love and grace and present in children who are not left out of the promises of God, no matter the age. Who are not left out of the gift of baptism, no matter the age.

Baptism is a sacrament. The Articles or religion say.

Sacraments ordained of Christ are not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they are certain signs of grace, and God's good will toward us, by which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm, our faith in him…The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about; but that we should duly use them.

We must use them. Baptism is not something to keep under lock and key. It is a gift. It is a great treasure. It is a means of grace. Baptism is God acting on us and God acts on us at any age or time whether we are aware of it or not.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that Baptism "implies a break. Christ invades the realm of Satan and lays hold of those who belong to him, thereby creating his church-community. Past and present are thus torn asunder. The old has passed away, everything has become new." (206)

Baptism is not the end of a story but the beginning of something new. It is a break not a climax. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I agree with the United Methodist Church's position on baptism. Baptism is not an end but a beginning. There is always life after baptism. Even for someone baptized at the end of life, there is life after it. The baptized Christian is not the glorified Christian. They are, instead, the washed Christian.

Many of us are familiar with bathing (some more than others). Many, too, are familiar with bathing children. When we bathe Dominic, we really need to scrub him sometimes. We never think, though, after a bath, that he will never be dirty again, right? There is never a perfect bath where Alina or I can say: 'we have finally done it. He is clean for all time.' No, we know he will get dirty again and we know we will wash him again. Ephraim does not get that dirty, but he still spills things on himself and we need to bathe him. Even with the perfect infant skin, he needs to be washed from time to time.

There will be a time when Dominic and Ephraim will be able to bathe themselves, but we shouldn't wait until then to give them a bath, right? We don't wait until as much dirt as humanly possible has been built up in order to let them bathe themselves, right?

In the waters of Baptism, the powers of the spiritual forces of this world are smashed. The claim of God's grace in baptism is that by being buried in Christ's death, one rises in life through Christ's resurrection. One no longer is a slave to sin. The old has been washed away. Even the old for an infant. Sin is not simply the concrete acts of willful disobedience. Sin is the brokenness of this world. Sin is our tendency towards self-destruction and self-satisfaction at the expense of other people. Sin is the dirt of the soul that keeps us from God. There is freedom here. Freedom to love. Freedom to be a part of a people committed to sacrificial love. As Bonhoeffer says, 'Infant baptism without the church-community is not only an abuse of the sacrament. It also betrays a reprehensible thoughtlessness in dealing with children's spiritual welfare." (212)

What we just did was not just a show or a naming day or a christening, though we can easily turn it into that. Christians have often not taken Baptism seriously. Not taken their own baptism seriously or that of another. We often stare at the beautiful child and think about the beauty and not the sin that is washed away. Not the commitment that is demanded. The commitment to be the church. The commitment to be the body of Christ in this place. God acts in Baptism

Back to bathing. We can wash Ephraim all we want and get all of the spilled milk and hair grease off of him. We can't wash his soul. We cannot clean him of the stain of sin. He cannot clean himself. No matter what age he is, he cannot clean himself. What is impossible for humans, though, is possible for God. We are justified by Christ's sacrifice. As the old gospel hymn has it, Jesus Paid it all. All to him we owe. Sin had cast a crimson stain he washed us white as snow.

The crimson stain of sin will be washed away, but again, Baptism is a beginning not an end. What comes next is just as important and it is what we are all responsible for. God is the one who acts in baptism. It is a sacrament: an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

To baptize a child is to initiate them into the body of people who see that Jesus is Lord, who see that death has been defeated, who see that sacrificial love is both the peak of human existence and possible for all. By baptizing Ephraim, by baptizing anyone, you all here present are making a claim about your own faith.

How many baptisms have you witnessed? Or just think of one person who you have seen baptized. How often have you prayed for them? How often have you shown them love and kindness? Baptism is a beginning but our human tendency toward selfishness and self-involvement can distort it into a pretty day that is easily forgotten. God does not make a mistake at baptism. But we can make a mistake. We can forget our promises. We can forget our vows. We can forget our own promise to God and live lives of practical atheism concerned more with our retirement accounts than with the needs of those around us.

The Ethiopian Eunuch asked Philip, 'why should I not be baptized?' There is not a good reason to withhold the grace of God from someone. It is a gift with a promise. The gift is made to the child. The promise is made by us. By Alina and I, but also by all of you here today.

And so I commend to you this day: remember your baptism. Remember that you are loved! Remember that you are forgiven. God meets you where you are but God does not leave you there. God meets Ephraim here in this sacrament. In this gift. But God is not done with Ephraim and God is not done with you.

Remember your baptism. Remember the promises you make today. And remember the promise that God has made to you, that nothing will separate you from the Love of God.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Sermon preached in Winchester, TX, on April 10, 2016

Text: Acts 9:1-20

This is my impression of John Wesley’s preaching technique. Give a little bit of the gospel, then hit them with the law, then bring back the gospel again. This joke a strangely relevant because when we talk about conversion, we need to know where someone is in order to know where they are going.

Conversion comes in many ways. If you write ‘convert’ in Google, the first few hints are ‘convert to mp3’, ‘convert to pdf’, ‘convert money’. Yet these common and modern uses are helpful for us here. To convert is to change. You have to be something to convert to something. There cannot be a conversion from nothing. That would be creation.

The Book of Acts gives us a good sense about where Paul is coming from. We read at the beginning of the passage for today: “Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest, seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.”  Also, we read in Galatians, “You heard about my previous life in Judaism, how severely I harassed God’s church and tried to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my peers, because I was much more militant about the traditions of my ancestors.”

The Pauline conversion is the most radical one imaginable. He goes from actively opposing and oppressing Christians (who were called followers of the Way in his time) to becoming the most active and influential evangelist of all time. Paul also points to the power of Jesus’s preaching when he says, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute.” Paul points to the power of “judge not lest ye be judged.” According to our common sense judgments, no Christian should have ever given Saul a chance. According to our common sense judgments, all of his actions should have discredited him entirely from any authority or influence within the movement of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

However, if God raised Jesus from the dead, God transforming the heart of the oppressor is a minor thing. Which brings me back to the internet.

The internet is a funny place. I grew up with networks of some kind or another. My father started buying family computers in the early 80s. My older brother, John, sold me his computer (which ran MS DOS) when he left for college. He had been connected to BBS’s, or Bulletin Board Systems, which were like early message boards. People would talk about and argue anything. I played a mmo or mmorpgs which were text only only role playing games. I would debate with people about Nirvana guitar solos. I was 12. BBSs went out of style in the mid-90s as more people got online and browsers like Netscape became popular. However, the point is that from the beginning, the internet was a place to have arguments with other people.

The internet is still a place to have arguments. There is a comic I really enjoy that has a picture of a man at a computer. A voice off-frame says “Are you coming to bed?” The man says, “I can’t. This is important.” The off-screen person says “What?” And the man says, “someone is WRONG on the internet.”

The joke is that there is always someone wrong on the internet yet responding rarely ever does anything useful. Pointing out the wrongness of another person's argument rarely if ever convinces them of anything. The ancient Greek myth of sisyphus has him punished for his craftiness by rolling a boulder uphill all day long, only to have it roll back down at night. He must do this task over and over again for eternity. Correcting people online is a sysphian task. It never ends because people don’t want to be corrected.

Paul is converted in an amazing way, but we will get back to this. Later in Acts, Paul is in Athens preaching at the areopagitica, the Mars Hill.

So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:22-31, NASB)

This is an impassioned and powerful message which I believe still has relevance today. However, what is interesting is that Paul did not change the hearts of many in Athens after they heard a message like this. A few people converted that day, but Paul did not leave a church in Athens in the way he left one in Corinth and Philipi and Thesolonika.

Apologetics, the act of providing a defense for the faith, is just that. It is a defense. Apologetics is about disarming negative arguments about Christianity. There are positive arguments to be made, for sure, but conversion does not happen at the end of a positive argument but after an act of God in one’s life. Conversion can only be the result of grace.

The good thing for us and for everybody is that grace is always and everywhere present, even for those who do not believe. God is not absent a witness in this world, but God is also not absent. The Holy Spirit is present through prevenient grace. Prevenient means come before. Even though people sin and are ignorant, God is still with them and God still loves them and desires their love.

So let us return to Paul’s conversion how Luke recounts it.

Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest, seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. During the journey, as he approached Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven encircled him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice asking him, “Saul, Saul, why are you harassing me?” Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are harassing,” came the reply. “Now get up and enter the city. You will be told what you must do.” Those traveling with him stood there speechless; they heard the voice but saw no one. After they picked Saul up from the ground, he opened his eyes but he couldn’t see. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind and neither ate nor drank anything. In Damascus there was a certain disciple named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision, “Ananias!” He answered, “Yes, Lord.” The Lord instructed him, “Go to Judas’ house on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias enter and put his hands on him to restore his sight.” Ananias countered, “Lord, I have heard many reports about this man. People say he has done horrible things to your holy people in Jerusalem. He’s here with authority from the chief priests to arrest everyone who calls on your name.” The Lord replied, “Go! This man is the agent I have chosen to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites. I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Ananias went to the house. He placed his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord sent me—Jesus, who appeared to you on the way as you were coming here. He sent me so that you could see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Instantly, flakes fell from Saul’s eyes and he could see again. He got up and was baptized. After eating, he regained his strength. He stayed with the disciples in Damascus for several days. Right away, he began to preach about Jesus in the synagogues. “He is God’s Son,” he declared. (Acts 9:1-20, CEB)

Saul of Tarsus changes his name to Paul, which means humble. Saul was named after the first king of Israel, it means prayed for in Hebrew, Paul is different.

Are we to expect a light to encircle us from heaven and a voice to call out? No. Conversions like this rarely happen. In fact, the conversion that takes place just before Paul’s in Acts is much more paradigmatic. Philip is walking along and he is stopped by an Ethiopian eunuch who asks him some questions about Isaiah. Philip explains. Then, the Eunuch says, why should I not be baptized?

There is no voice from heaven, but there is the still small voice of God calling, seeking, pushing, converting transforming.

There is no hierarchy of conversion stories in God’s eyes. The more dramatic converts are not superior to others who wake up one day and believe. Yet conversion is also not a one time event. Sometimes, it is only by looking back at our life that we can find a true moment of conversion. We look back and we see that we were going one direction. And then, for whatever reason, we find ourselves going another direction. This shift we call grace. This other direction we call sanctification. Whenever we are moving towards God we are becoming more holy, more full of love. You cannot separate holiness and love. That is the problem with the pharisees. They were so fixated on their own purity that they forgot how to love. They were so fixated on the speck they saw in their neighbors eye that they could not see the log in their own.

So in this season of Easter, let us look at our lives to see what path we are on. Are you on the path that is narrow that goes to the sheepfold gate of our shepherd? Or are you on the path that is wide that goes toward self-destruction? Are you building up or are you tearing down?

We are a resurrection people. It is never too late for conversion. It is never too late to turn your life around. It is never too late to commit anew to Jesus. To seek his love. To follow him. It is never too late to love your neighbor. It is never to late to love your enemy. It is never too late seek forgiveness. It is never too late to give mercy.

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

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The text for this sermon was John 20:19-31

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The text for this sermon was Isaiah 58:1-7

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A Sermon Preached on Transfiguration Sunday in Winchester, TX

Text: Luke 9:28-36

The transfiguration is an amazing moment as much for what doesn’t happen as for what does. If we go through it slowly, Jesus takes the disciples closest to him up to the top of a mountain. Traditionally, this place is located at Mount Tabor. Mount Tabor rises high above the desert below. It is a steep way to the top. It takes a long time to drive to the top in a car, so walking probably took the entire day from the base to the summit.

I think that is the place to begin. Jesus takes Peter and John and James up a mountain to pray. Peter, John, and James walk uphill for a day to pray with Jesus.

They arrive and they see something amazing.

“While Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appear in glory…”

They appeared in glory and it is overwhelming to the point that the disciples don’t know how to respond. Peter wants to build a tabernacle, in part, because he never wants to leave. This was, i believe, exactly what they had been expecting of Jesus from the beginning: an event akin to Moses on the mountaintop.

The transfiguration is what we expect of Jesus. Something amazing, spectacular, glorious. Yet this glorious moment is amazingly private. Jesus doesn’t reveal himself in his glory in the temple at Jerusalem in front of thousands of people but with his friends after an all day hike.

Moses went up to the mountaintop alone but all of the people of Israel could see that something amazing was taking place. The people saw the storm out of which God spoke and when Moses came back down the mountain, the people saw that his face had been marked by seeing the glory of God. They all witnessed it.

More than that, when Moses first took command of the people of Israel, he did so through miraculous acts of pestilence. He did so by turning the river red with blood and by sending in swarms of locusts and frogs and other not great things. The first miracle of Jesus was when he turned the water into wine. After that, he healed the blind and the sick and the leprous. Jesus didn’t send pestilence. Jesus took away pestilence wherever he came across it. Jesus took the sickness away from the people who sought him out. The woman who came up and touched his garment. The people who lowered their crippled friend through the roof of the building.

Christ was first revealed as God in the most humble way imaginable: as a newborn infant. The end of Jesus’s ministry is also found in humility on the cross. He submits to being arrested and beaten and mocked.

Mother Teresa wrote:

The whole Gospel—if we read it carefully, prayerfully—tells us to learn this one lesson from the heart of Jesus: to be meek and humble. How will you learn humility? Not by reading plenty of books, or by listening to many words, but by accepting humiliations. In everybody’s life there are continually throughout the day many of these beautiful gifts—chances to show our love for Jesus in those little things, these little humiliations. And if we are humble, we are pure in heart, then we will see the face of God in prayer and so be able to see God in one another. (Page 134-35)

We often think that the peak of religious faith looks like the transfiguration. We think of it as this overwhelming ecstasy and joy that is hard to describe and contain. Instead, the absolute peak of Christ’s incarnation is not found after going up to the mountain. Instead, we see God most clearly when Christ comes down the mountain on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to the cross.

The cross is where Christ is most revealed as God. As well, the cross is where we can relate to Christ in the most concrete way possible.

I had a mountaintop experience in Peru. We were in the favela’s on the outskirts of Lima with people from the Amazon, many of which didn’t even speak Spanish. They spoke Quechua

[sing in quechua]

After a week, I went with a translator to the top of a hill and we prayed over the area and I felt filled with the Holy Spirit in a way that I no longer needed the translator to communicate. It was an amazing experience that I will never forget but also will never replicate.

Not everyone has that experience of God. In fact, every experience of God is unique. We could imagine a world where the primary mode of Christ’s revelation was the transfiguration. But again, they went down the mountain. There was more to do. There was more to be. Christ had to turn his face to Jerusalem, to suffering, to death.

And in this we see that those moments in life where God is most with us are not the mountaintops, however amazing they are. Instead, God is most with us on our crosses. God is most with us in those moments of suffering and doubt and grief and trauma. God is most with us in our poverty and our meekness and our weakness. God is most with us when we are most in need.

This is what Lent is all about, exposing our need for God and preparing our hearts for the passion of Christ.

Ash Wednesday is coming up this week. We will have a short service at 6:00pm with the laying on of ashes. Lent is a time of fasting and discipline. Lent is a time to let go of old habits and to pick up new habits. Lent is a time to remember Christ’s journey to Jerusalem and our own personal Jerusalem’s, the times we were most in need of grace or patience or healing or life or love. During Lent, we lift up our grief and our pain and in so doing, we are reminded that God is with us in this place. God did not cause our pain, but God transforms it. Christ did not cause death, but in Christ’s crucifixion, death will be conquered. We cannot jump too quickly to Easter and resurrection, yet it is not wrong of us to try and stay on the mountaintop a little bit longer. Christ readies himself for what is ahead by going to the mountaintop to pray. May we, this day, ready ourselves for Lent by praying on our own mountain top here.

In order to stay in this place, I want to sing for a you song about the transfiguration entitled the Transfiguration by Sufjan Stevens.

"The Transfiguration"

When he took the three disciples to the mountainside to pray His countenance was modified, his clothing was aflame Two men appeared, Moses and Elijah came They were at his side The prophecy, the legislation spoke Of whenever he would die

Then there came a word of what he should accomplish on the day Then Peter spoke, to make of them a tabernacle place A cloud appeared in glory as an accolade They fell on the ground A voice arrived, the voice of God The face of God covered in a cloud

What he said to them, the voice of God, the most beloved son Consider what he says to you, consider what's to come The prophecy was put to death, was put to death And so will the son And keep your word, disguise the vision Till the time has come

Lost in the cloud, a voice Have no fear, we draw near Lost in the cloud, a sign Son of man, turn your ear

Lost in the cloud, a voice Lamb of God, we draw near Lost in the cloud, a sign Son of man, son of God

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A Sermon Preached in Winchester, TX, on January 17, 2016

Text: John 2:1-10

Parties are a lot of fun. It is great to be surrounded by friends and family, loved ones who earnestly care for you. Most of my life, I was quite nervous about parties. I have some social anxiety issues so I was always insecure about what I should do. I never went to parties in high school or college really. Most of the parties of my life were family celebrations: weddings, holidays, birthdays. But I still would lean to a side.

A good party is participating in something bigger than yourself. It is when people are truly invested in others and seek them out. A good party is not draining but uplifting. Sometimes it takes a while for a party to get going.

One of my favorite tv shows was called Parks and Recreation. It was about the parks department of a small city in rural Indiana. Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, was the most earnest person alive as the assistant parks director. She cared about the outdoors and civic life with passion unshared by anyone in her life. Her boss, Ron Swanson, was a libertarian who didn’t believe in government and so worked a government job to make sure that the government ran as slowly as possible.

Well, one episode consists of Leslie throwing a Halloween party. She is super excited but super nervous. Tom Haverford, another parks employee played by comedian Aziz Ansari, mocks Leslie incessantly. He is rude and obnoxious and infers that he won’t be coming. The party starts and it is a dud. It is like a junior high dance taking place in small living room. Everyone is standing on the edges. No one is really talking to anyone. It is lame and it continues to be lame and Leslie feels like a failure until Tom shows up dressed like T-Pain, a hip hop artist. He brings energy and excitement music and draws everyone together. He even brings A Roomba, one of those vacuum cleaning robots that roll around on the floor, and puts a stereo on him, to call it DJ Roomba.

Tom Haverford doesn’t just bring better music, he brings the energy, the thrill of life that a good party contains. A good party is communion and fellowship, no matter where it takes place. When people are present together in love and joy, God is present. The two most consistent calls of God throughout scripture are repent and rejoice. In fact, it would not be mistaken to think of repentance as the path to rejoicing. Repentance allows us to rejoice. The Passion of Christ leads to the joy of resurrection that has been open to all of us.

The reading today from the Gospel According to John describes Christ’s first miracle. The changing of water into wine. It is a curious miracle. Most of the recorded miraculous events of Christ are healings. People who are lame or blind or sick who are healed by Christ’s touch or words. Those are miracles that anyone can understand. In John Chapter 2, it looks like Jesus is simply making the world’s shortest beer run. The event doesn’t take place in the other Gospels. It is simply here in John that we see Jesus perform a different sort of miracle to show that he is a different sort of Messiah.

John the Baptist went into the wilderness and preached, Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. John the Baptist was a true fire and brimstone kind of guy. He was the traveling revivalist talking about the sin of the world. With Jesus, we have something different.

The first miracle could have been a number of different things. He could have followed in the tradition of Moses and turned the river into blood or called in locusts or frogs or something like that. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is often portrayed as a new Moses of sorts, but he never brings the plagues. Jesus does not seek us to believe through suffering. Jesus seeks us to believe through Joy. In Christ, we see the love of God absolutely incarnated, God with us, Emmanuel, and this means livening up the party from time to time.

So Jesus is at a wedding in Cana with his family and his disciples and they run out of wine. This is before his ministry begins in earnest, which is why when Mary asks him to do something about, Jesus responds quickly with what seems like a no. I don’t think Mary knew what she was asking. Instead, she saw a party that had run out of beverages and she didn’t think that should happen.

It is important to clarify upon the place of water and wine in ancient society. As Gerald Sloyan writes:

Water is the great elixir of the Bible…No one speaks ill of water in the Middle East. Similarly, no one should suppose that wine flows freely and was drunk everywhere in the lands of the Bible. It was a cash crop for vintners, like olive oil. Many a peasant was busy in its production. But the poor drank little wine and ate less meat. Cheese and bread and olive oil were their far, with water for their daily thirst. At a wedding or other family celebration, it was different.  (Sloyan, 36)

Weddings are different. Parties are different. This is not a normal day. We aren’t laboring in the fields or toiling in our homes. This is not a normal day.

Leisure has become a much greater part of societal life than it was for most of human existence. We have free time. Many people have time to just sit and relax. Though some still work three jobs, they are the exception. Today, if you get invited to a wedding, unless you are related, usually you only go if you don’t have anything else planned. So much of modern social life is a competition between amazing luxuries that would have been unimaginable a century ago let alone two millennia ago.

Jesus did not come to end the fun. Jesus did not come to end the party but to start the real party, the eternal party.

Heaven is difficult to describe. Christians have been trying for two thousand years and we still aren’t that clear about it. The bible isn’t that clear about it. We have a few images. One is the heavenly host singing Hosanna in the highest, as depicted to the Shepherds on Christmas morning. Another is a feast.

On this mountain,    the Lord of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples        a rich feast, a feast of choice wines,        of select foods rich in flavor,        of choice wines well refined. He will swallow up on this mountain the veil that is veiling all peoples,    the shroud enshrouding all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe tears from every face;    he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth,        for the Lord has spoken. They will say on that day, “Look! This is our God,    for whom we have waited—    and he has saved us! This is the Lord, for whom we have waited;    let’s be glad and rejoice in his salvation!” (Isaiah 25:6-9)

A great feast with death swallowed up. But more than that, a feast that does not go old. Most of what we do gets old. Actually, everything we do as humans has the propensity to get old.

An easy way to imagine hell is to think about one thing you like to do, let’s say hunting, and only doing that one thing forever for eternity. There is no one else. There is nothing else. There is only sitting in your blind or going on safari. Hunting can be a lot of fun. I went hunting last weekend for the first time in 19 years. But if it is the only thing, it can get boring or even dreadful.

Another way is to think about eating only the same thing for every meal forever. Think about a steak or burger or even spinach tamales, which are close to my favorite food. I love spinach tamales. If I had them for every meal eternally, I think my mind would change.

Heaven is a party that never gets old. Heaven is not the experience of an earthly party repeated. Heaven is joy continuous. Death is swallowed up. Sin is gone. Nothing can be boring. Nothing can dull. No one can be hurtful. We are all fully ourselves and fully with God. The Christian promise does not contain clouds and harps but a feast the likes of which even the wealthiest have never seen. A kingly feast given to all.

Jesus shares a glimpse at the heavenly banquet by not letting the party die. His time comes. His ministry starts. He keeps the joy going because joy points to his father in heaven.

So let us keep the joy going. Let us be a people who hold on to joy. Who hold on to love and to life. Not by denying death and suffering, but by overcoming it. God will swallow up death forever. The LORD will wipe tears from every face. That is a reason to be thankful. That is a reason to be joyful. That is a reason for the party to continue. For the water to be wine. For the lost to be found. collegiality

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

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A Sermon Preached in Winchester, TX on January 3, 2016

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

White Noise is a novel by Don DeLillo about Jack Gladney, a professor at a midwestern university. Gladney works in the field of Hitler studies. In fact, he helped to create the field. The novel is about a lot of things, but it begins with this amazing Irony. Jack Gladney, creator of the academic field Hitler Studies, does not know a lick of German. He starts taking German lessons near the beginning of the novel because he is receiving an award and he is afraid that people will discover his great ignorance, that his career has been built on a fraud.

I think about Jack Gladney when I read about Herod.

The Birth of the Messiah presents a challenge to Herod. There is a political issue going on. Herod claims power, in a manner, from the Divine. Herod’s power stems from his wealth and his connections. Herod had been given authority by Marc Antony, the same Marc Antony who said, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” Herod was seen with suspicion by the Jewish people of the region because even though he practiced Judaism, his family were Edomite converts. On top of this, Herod had replaced the last Hasmonian King, which were the descendants of the Macabees.

All that is to say, Herod’s power was always on a precipice. Herod rebuilt the Temple in large part to strengthen his power but it did not buy him any favors. He thought he could even be seen as the Messiah, as the one who had come to rebuild the Temple. This was not to be the case. He was still seen with suspicion by many. The coming of the Messiah would crush any claims to authority. One of the main religious reasons why Israel did not claim the top of the Temple Mount when they conquered East Jerusalem in the Six Days War was that it is believed that only the Messiah can rebuild the Temple.

The Messiah was said to be the heir of David, the great king. He will be called the king of kings and Lord of Lords, Isaiah points out. King of kings is a classical way to make a superlative. That is, the king of kings would be the best king, the highest king, the most powerful king. The king of kings would rule justly and fairly and those who are not ruling justly and fairly would lose power.

Herod was afraid and he was right to be afraid. His power was not divine. It was fraudulent. Jesus was a direct threat to Herod, but he was also an indirect threat to Caesar and to all authorities in their lives.

Has Jesus ever been a threat to your life?

Or more to the point, has Jesus ever been a threat to your way of life?

This is the heart of the matter.

Does the coming of Jesus threaten something of yours? Does the coming of Jesus challenge anything you desire?

Some examples,

When I was a student at UT (hook ‘em), I was a giant basketball fan. UT isn’t known for its basketball (or really, it’s football nowadays), but I really loved basketball. Football fans are always lost in the crowd. Football players are covered with pads and helmets. You cannot see their faces. They are more pieces on a game board than people playing a game.

The most expensive seats at a football game are in the luxury boxes far above the stadium. They are set apart without much of a view of the actual game. My dad likes to talk about when the Astrodome was built, they didn’t know what to do with the seats at the top. They couldn’t make them cheap enough for people to buy so they sealed them in and made them so expensive so that no normal people could buy them. That’s football. Basketball is different.

In basketball, you see everything: faces, expressions, struggle, success. The closer you get to the court, the more visceral the exhibition you witness.

As a student, I could get season football tickets and sit somewhere high above. For basketball, to get the best seats in the house, all I had to do was be there before anyone else. If I was willing to sleep outside the doors of the Erwin center, I could stand and scream on the front row.

I loved it! I loved the rush. I loved the thrill of the game. I love that it cost something to be there. In my own head, I earned it. I earned that place.

I loved basketball. It was an identity. After school, I went to Duke for seminary, another place known for its basketball.

Does the coming of Jesus challenge anything you desire?

Basketball is a good thing in and of itself. It is an extraordinary game of skill and power. But anyone can take it to an extreme that distorts the good and turns it in to something else.

I had turned it into something else and as my faith grew I saw clearly how I had distorted basketball into something that it was not.

Basketball was a fairly spectacular failure of mine.

Another obsession was mountain climbing. When I lived in Colorado, I would go up to the mountains almost every other weekend to hike up a 14er. There are 58 14ers and I wanted to climb every one. 14ers are hard, even the easy ones are hard. Many of the ones in Colorado can be summited after a long days walk. Only about a quarter of them require serious technical climbing skills. That is, ropes and harnesses and axes and things of that nature.

Even the walks are hard, though. I lost my breath at 12,000 ft every time. 12 was always the worst, no matter how many mountains I claimed. Once I broke 12,500 I was good.

Many of these trips I took alone, which is not a good idea. If something happened, I was out there without aid or the possibility of aid.

I was acting foolishly and it was exhilarating.

Most of our failures, though, are much more mild in expression. The failure to care about the person in front of us in line, for instance.

This is why common morality fails us. The faithful life is not just following a list of right behavior and avoiding a list of wrong behavior. The human heart can corrupt anything. God created everything good. There is nothing that we cannot distort and turn away from its proper purpose. This corrupting desire, this is what we call sin.

There can be big sins or little sins. The good thing about big sins is that they are hard to miss. The little sins, though, they are tricky. We can pass over them. We can rationalize them. We obfuscate them consistently by saying ‘nobody’s perfect’ or ‘it is only one time’ or ‘who are you to judge?’

Common morality is comforting. It is black and white. Either you do it or you don’t. With common morality we think we earn something by following the rules. We think we are saved by following the rules. In this way, we are our own mini-herods. We think we can save ourselves by building our own temples. Or we think we can save ourselves by not thinking about it at all. By distracting ourselves with hobbies or tv shows or fantasies or the dull toil of the daily grind.

What the coming of Christ shows us is that no matter the planning or good intentions, we cannot remain pure by following instructions. Instead, a transformation must take place to turn our hearts that lean towards corruption into hearts that move towards God.

And we see this most of all because the transformer, the redeemer does not come with a sword but as a child in the most surprising of places: a small village in Judaea.

As the prophet said:

       You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,            by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah,            because from you will come one who governs,            who will shepherd my people Israel.”

The wise men were wise precisely in that they were able to imagine the possibility that a king could come from a poor village. The wise men were wise because they knew that the promised star did not represent a continuation of the status quo but a clean break with the ways of the past.

The new year is psychologically helpful because it represents the possibility of a clean break with the past. It is a new year. The calendar is fairly arbitrary. It is helpful but there is no actual difference between December 31 and January 1 except in our heads.

And that is alright. If making resolutions and thinking about the new year helps you change behaviors, wonderful. But the transformation shown by Christ is not just found in obligation. It is not found in just thinking it would be nicer to sin less but to actually  desire following God more than following your own will. Why am I spending more of my time with basketball than God? Why am I spending most of emotional energy with basketball?

One of the helpful parts about the new year is that it gives us the opportunity to reflect on how we spend our time and what we actually care about. There are only 24 hours in a day. We all sleep a portion of that and eat another part et cetera. We all have obligations beyond that like work or family or keeping up our homes, yet our entire lives are not filled with external obligations. we have choices. And beyond that, what we see as obligations tend to be those things we give importance to.

It is a new day if we make it so. Not a new day to save ourselves but a new day to receive the grace necessary for true transformation. The grace necessary to not act out of obligation but out of a desire for God.

I still watch basketball from time to time. I still hike when I can, but it is different. I don’t seek self-fulfillment in these things. I seek it in loving God and my neighbor.

In June, God willing, when I am ordained and the Bishop asks me if I am on the road to perfection, I will say yes. The road is long, for sure. Some days my road seems impossible and it would be impossible for me on my own. But for God, nothing is impossible. With God, even the sinner that I am can be redeemed, and I can be perfected in love. Perfection is truly living as if there is nothing I desire more in a given day (not food, not rest, not tv or even basketball) than glorifying God by loving my neighbor as my self.

In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.

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A Sermon preached on December 27, 2015 in Smithville, TX. 

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A Sermon Preached in Winchester, TX, on Christmas Eve, 2015

Text: Luke 2:1-14

A large part about growing up is learning how to discern the difference between want and need, between desire and necessity. Things you want and things without which you cease to exist. Immaturity, at its root, is turning every desire into an immediate necessity.

“Dad, can I watch another show?” “No.” “If I don’t watch another show, I will die.”

or

“Dad, I don’t like that.” “Yes, you do like cheese pizza. You are going to eat it.” “If I eat it, I will die.”

And so on.

What do we want in this life and what do we need?

When I first started hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2004, my list of what I needed was long. I thought I needed to take three novels and a book of Greek poetry, as well as a guitar and fully dehydrated precooked meals. I didn’t think I ever needed to sleep on a bed or to take a shower or any of those things. I started hiking with 60 pounds on my back. After a month on the trail, though, I quickly discovered the difference between want and need. All of these things I thought I needed were just weighing me down. Even my tent was an extra and unnecessary burden.

Hiking brought the issue of want and need to a head. In so many ways, the question is about control. Having desires that can be fulfilled comes from positions of privilege and power. Having needs comes from being human.

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs misunderstands this confusing necessity and desire. The bottom two segments of his pyramid, physiological and safety, fall more into my previous definition of necessity: things without which you cease to exist. Love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are descriptions of desire. Maslow, himself, was extraordinarily class-oriented in his assessments and the creation of his categories. He explicitly focused on the top 1% saying that “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a crippled psychology and a crippled philosophy.” Maslow's work is not a study of being human but a study of being successful in mid-twentieth century America.

Worse, Maslow trumpets the myth that we can be self-actualized in and of ourselves. And I know you didn’t come to church tonight for an extensive critique of a mid-twentieth century psychological theory, but culturally, Maslow has a lot of weight. People who have never read Motivation and Personality quote the hierarchy of needs often. It is a way of rationalizing success and of blaming people who struggle in life for their own struggles because they should just have more self-esteem. The logic of Maslow is behind judging the woman who buys a nice meal with food stamps because you don’t think she needs it. It places a stigma on poverty, a stigma on every non-normative behavior.

But let us get back to need and want for one more moment because we cannot understand Christmas without understanding our need for a savior. Faith is not a hobby like golf or a social club like Rotary. It can turn into those things but it is not those things. As Herbert McCabe says,

Faith is all about trying to understand. It is about not being content to understand the things that are obvious, the things we can already see. It is about trying to understand what we do not see.

Faith seeks something. Faith seeks to understand something. Faith seeks what is beyond the empirically verifiable. Faith points to not simply what is repeatable, but what is beautiful.

Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christ child, the birth of Jesus in a food trough 2000 years ago. The celebration is not for the birth itself but for God entering into the world. The God who created everything becoming human in a way that will allow humans to participate in the fullness of what they were created to be: in the fullness of being, in the fullness of life, in the fullness of love. God entering the world. Love entering the world.

It is not that love was absent from the world before Christ; there were vestiges, there were pieces, there were hints. Nor is it that love is total in the world after Christmas. There is still brokenness. There is still discord. There is still need.

What we have in Christmas is the amazing possibility of reconciliation with our creator. What we have at Christmas is the amazing possibility of reconciliation with each other. And the transformation of desire into necessity, into what we need.

Not just what we empirically need, but what we truly need.

The two guaranteed things in life, the two necessary things: death and taxes. In Christ, those are both taken away. Taxes are taken away because we give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and we give unto God what is God’s. The taxing authority does not have ultimate authority over us. It did not create us, yet it serves a function that our creator saw fit not to disrupt. The Romans did not have the most above boards of taxing agents yet Jesus did not see fit to start his revolution there.

As well, the power of death is taken away. The pain of death is still there. The pain of loss is still present. Loss is prevalent, is deep. Grief is prevalent, is deep. Yet ultimately, death is not the most defining aspect of our life, of our humanity. Death is not the king of this world. Those who collect taxes are not the kings of this world. They do not declare what we desire. They do not shape what we desire. Trends and brands and celebrities and companies, they do not have ultimate authority and power over our desires. We are free from these false Gods. Free to let our desires be shaped by love, by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. We are free to let our desires be conformed to the child that came on Christmas, to the love of God, to the love of neighbor. To love itself that preached Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. We are transformed by the one who said I did not come for the righteous but for the unrighteous. We are transformed by the one who said when you did so unto the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did so unto me. And ultimately, this is where we see our need for a savior. That no matter what level of self-actualization you reach, you cannot save yourself. No matter what level of self-mastery you reach, you cannot save your loved ones. You cannot save your friends. You are in need. I am in need of something more.

There is no greater love that can be conceived than the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. A love that secures our freedom yet provides for our reconciliation. A love that is entirely self-emptying, entirely self-giving to the point that God can be found in a screaming, crying child.

God is not just here, though, with the child. The God Christians worship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is found most profoundly in those forgotten and cast out places of modern life. In the cancer ward, in the refugee camp, in the soup kitchen line, in the jail cell. God is found in the child whose father beats him, and the couple who desires nothing more than a child but cannot conceive. God is found in the children’s hospital, in those surviving the car wreck, and in those who don’t survive.

God is not present in these moments because God dictates them from on high. To think of God as a puppet master is to think of God not as the creator but as the autocrat, as Milton's Satan.

No. God is found most profoundly with those who suffer and struggle. for we see in the life and death of Christ that God chose to reveal Godself in the places of struggle. Abraham Maslow choose not to study those who are crippled because it would create a crippled psychology. Bertrand Russell opposed the teaching of journalism at Cambridge because he thought “This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.” God is found most profoundly in the filthy multitude because we see in Jesus that the perfect image of God does not look like a wise Greek sage or a Roman senator or even Levite priest but a Galileen carpenter whose mother said yes to God. This carpenter did not pick himself up by his bootstraps. Instead, he preached and loved and suffered for it and was tortured and was killed.

As Terry Eagleton says,

The Christian faith holds that those who are able to look on the crucifixion and live, to accept that the traumatic truth of human history is a tortured body, might just have a chance of new life – but only by virtue of an unimaginable transformation in our currently dire condition. This is known as the resurrection. Those who don’t see this dreadful image of a mutilated innocent as the truth of history are likely to be devotees of that bright-eyed superstition known as infinite human progress. Or they might be well-intentioned reformers or social democrats, which from a Christian standpoint simply isn’t radical enough. The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.

The love of God in Jesus Christ is not self-actualization but conversion. In Christ, we do not become who we want to be but who we were created to be: those who love fully, those who give fully, those who see the beauty of the margins, those who seek justice and love mercy and walk humbly, those who forgive unconditionally and serve unendingly. We don’t become those people through will-power or practice but through grace. A grace that was present before we were born, a grace that shapes us without our awareness. A grace that frees us to love fully and forgives us when we hold back, when we guard our hearts. A grace that forgives us when we look at the lost and the broken and say, “I am busy” or say “someone else can take care of it.”

Christmas is not simply about Jesus coming into our hearts, though, but God coming into the world in a political way as well as a spiritual one. Jesus has a lot to say about politics. Jesus has nothing to say about political parties or Donald Trump. Love does not stop at our front door. Love does not stop at our next-door neighbor. Love is not just for people who look like us and talk like us. This is a radical claim that Christians have not been very good at following through with. That I have not been very good at following through with, but God is not finished with me, and God is not finished with you.

At Christmas, we see that God has not given up on us. That love is not a pipe dream or simply sentimental verses reserved for the wealthy who can afford it. Love is not found in self-mastery but submission to the possibility of mercy. The possibility that even I have something to offer this world and its creator. Not my skill, not my productivity or knowledge.

What can I give him poor as I am If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet What can I give him, give him my heart.

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

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A Sermon Preached at Winchester UMC on September 20, 2015

Text: Mark 9:30-37 

We worship an invisible God. God is not made of the same stuff that we are made of. God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, created everything out of nothing and so God is in no way part of creation. Instead, God is the one through whom we live, move, and have our being. God is not found in an alternate reality or an alternate dimension, God is reality and we and everything that is made and matter are built upon that reality by the Word of God. We cannot see God as we see each other. We worship an invisible God.

After leaving Egypt, the Hebrew people were so frustrated by this fact. The needed something visible to worship. So, they gathered much of the gold which they had stolen from the Egyptians and melted it all together into the shape of a calf so that they could have something to worship.

We worship an invisible God. Importantly, one who doesn't look like us but the one who created all of us. We strayed from God long ago yet God was not satisfied with this arrangement and so God, who was and is and will be Triune, Father, Son, and Spirit, from before time, became flesh in the Son and was born to the woman, Mary. This man, Jesus Christ, preached to those who were far off and to those who were near, and he was crucified for it. He loved people fully and he was crucified for it.

But here I will tell you a mystery. On the third day Christ rose from the dead, conquering death, and he ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God the father almighty.

This is what we believe by faith, but in a stark way we are left with an invisible God.

Where is our God?

When we are hurting, where is our God?

When we are hungry, where is our God?

I prayed and God did not show up. Maybe there is no God?

I sought and I did not find. Maybe there is nothing to find?

It is not unreasonable to doubt.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a growing movement of people called Deists, men and women who believed in God but not in Christ. They believed that they were created by the God who created everything, but that that God had little to do with the day to day world. Natural Laws had been put in place to govern everything and the perfect human good was to learn those laws and not break them. Those laws also firmed up class structures, gender roles, and racial prejudices because the status quo had come about not through historical forces but due to the will of God. One should not free a slave because it was in their nature to be a slave. Women should not vote because it is not their nature to vote. And so on.

In truth, deism aligns far more to Greek and Roman ideologies that were prevalent at the time of Jesus than it does with anything Jesus says. Famously, the Deist Thomas Jefferson cut out large portions of the Gospels because he found them hard to believe. The deist himself is the ultimate arbiter of truth.

It is a short step from Deism to atheism. When we don't ned Christ, we don't need God. When we don't see Christ, we don't see God. Christ is the perfect image of God the Father.

When we are hurting, where is our God?

When we are hungry, where is our God?

I prayed and God did not show up. Maybe there is no God?

I sought and I did not find. Maybe there is nothing to find.

This is not unreasonable to doubt.

Let me tell you a mystery, God is invisible, but Christ did not leave us without a witness. The witness to Christ, though, looks far different than the status quo would like it to be. Christ, in fact, tells us where to find him. We are not to look in governors or leaders. We are not to look in our millionaires and billionaires. Instead, we are to look elsewhere.

“They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”” Mark 9:30-37 ESV

Children are dirty. At all ages, children are dirty. Right when they are born, children are covered in fluid and gunk. Then they start pooping and peeing all over everything. Then they start getting into dirt. Then they start going through puberty. Et cetera. Children are dirty. Children are unreliable. Children are easily bored. It is hard for a child to sit through a church service without another form of entertainment.

Talking to kids doesn't always go well. They can be loud or randomly start hitting you. I wanted Dominic to be here this morning for a purpose. It is hard for kids to sit still.

Two year olds would make poor entrepreneurs. They would be bad airline pilots. You wouldn't trust one with your investment accounts.

Christ tells us that whoever received one such child in his name received Christ.

Our God is here. Our God is not found in the King or the President or the movie star.  Our God is here.

Our God comes as a child and is still found as a child that is continually confounding to the status quo. We are never stable because we meet our God in the most unstable place imaginable.

But our God is not just with children.

““When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” Matthew 25:31-40 ESV

We hold in tension, as Christians, the unique reality that Christ is present with God the Father in heaven but also present with the stranger and the prisoner and the widow and the orphan. God is present with the refugee and the cancer patient, and the child whose parents are killed by drunk drivers and the parents whose child is killed.

We worship an invisible God who is visible to the world in uncomfortable ways. Our God is visible to us in ways that challenge who we are and where we are and what we believe. Our God is visible to us in ways that never look like the status quo but the people who the status quo stomps on and spits out. More than that, our God is visible in ways that we can choose to ignore.

We can say to ourselves as we pass someone in need, no, I don’t see Jesus there. We can say to ourselves, I’ve got to look out for me and mine. We can say to ourselves, what if, or worst case scenarios about what is going to happen to us. Or apathy can take over like in the church of Laodicean from the book of Revelation where John writes

You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I’m about to spit you out of my mouth. After all, you say, ‘I’m rich, and I’ve grown wealthy, and I don’t need a thing.’ You don’t realize that you are miserable, pathetic, poor, blind, and naked.

We don’t have to see God in the child. We don’t have to see God in the weak. We don’t have to see the poor as blessed or the meek is powerful. We don’t have pray for our enemies or love our neighbors. No one compels us to act in such a manner.

Instead, we can only live thusly by faith. God gives us the freedom to see that the presence of God is not found in the powerful of the world or those whom the world envy’s, but in those who are forgotten, or in those who are dismissed, like the loud, raucous, children.

The status quo is always a status built on the structures of original sin. Original sin was ultimately defeated on the cross with Christ but the remnants remain. Those remnants remain in power and are the corrupting force of those in power. We don’t see Christ in the powerful, but in the child.

We worship an invisible God who is visible in the weak and the broken and the unruly. We come together to praise and worship God. Let us go from this place to love our creator and redeemer where we may find him, in the children of our life, in the weak of our life, in the broken of our life. And, when we are sick, when we are broken, when we are in need, may we leave space for others to find God in us and in our brokenness.

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

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{ and i always end up here }

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Sermon Preached in Smithville, TX, on June 28, 2015

Text: Hebrews 11:1-7

For those of you who were with us last week, we talked about the first part of this passage from Hebrews 11. We talked about Cain and Abel and Abel’s sacrifice to God and why Abel’s sacrifice was found worthy. And one of the reasons was that he actually sacrificed. That Cain just kind of graised and picked some flowers and handed them to God. Whereas Abel slaughtered his lamb. He didn’t earn his salvation through that. Instead, Abel showed that he believed more in God than what was right in front of him.

Today we are going to talk about Enoch, but I don’t want us to leave this idea of sacrifice too swiftly. Again, this is not the sacrifice that gains us something, but the sacrifice that is a response to God’s presence in our lives. And so I want you to think about the question, “What have you sacrificied for your faith? What have you given up for your faith?” And another way to look at this same question is to ask yourself, “Is my faith a hobby? Is it something you do when it is convenient? Is it something you do when it is convenient? When there are not other pressures on your life?”

Auburn is going to be going to college soon. We have some other youth in that process. She had to fill out an application to go to college, and write some essays, and get some transcripts. And sometimes it seems like our faith is more of an heaven admissions application that we need to fill out and we want to get it really nice. I remember when I was in high school, I started a poetry club and a chess club solely for putting it on my resumé. I found a sponsor and we met once for each of them, and I was the president. It was awesome. But that’s not what this is. That’s not what faith is. God loves us first. God accepts us first. It is through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we are loved and forgiven. We don’t need earn our way to heaven.

Another way to think about it is to think about a heavenly merit badge system. Some of you may have been in boy scouts or girl scouts, and you may have gotten merit badges for knot tying and car maintenance and starting fires and other things. We think that if we have a big stash full of merit badges, Peter is just going to say, “Come on in!”

It is so easy to fall into this trap. To fall into this idea that we need to prove ourselves to God. That we need to earn our salvation this way because in so much of our lives, we have to prove ourselves. For those of you still working, for those of you in school, you have to prove yourselves consistently. You have to prove yourself to your boss. You have to prove yourself to your co-workers. You have to prove yourself to your teachers. You have to prove yourself to your grandchildren.

The amazing thing about grace is that God meets us first. In the Methodist church we talk about previenient grace. The grace that comes before. The love of God that comes to us before we can even acknowledge it. That God has already loved us. And any sacrifices we make are but a response to that prior love. The point of making a sacrifice of God, the point of looking for the fruit of faith is to make certain that we actually believe these things. That we do think Jesus is Lord of our life. That we do think God loves us. That we are loved and forgiven.

Now it is easy to deceive ourselves. This is why it is important to hold onto the language of sacrifice, for when we sacrifice something, we know that it matters.

As some of you know, I am a big basketball. I used to be a lot bigger basketball fan. My father, when he was in high school, played Nolan Ryan in basketball, and he did not do too well. If you can imagine, Nolan Ryan was pretty good at basketball. My father was at Dickinson High and Nolan was at Alvin.

My dad loved basketball and he taught us to love basketball. I went to the University of Texas and I loved basketball. Football was so draining. You’d spend all day getting sunburned. I would go to the games, but you would just get exhausted and be useless the rest of the day.

But basketball was at night and nice. I used to campout for basketball, right in front of the Erwin Center. And I even rode in the back of a CRV with a guy I had met that week to Denver. And not the back as in the back seat, but the back by the window, in the very back, that if you open it up you fall out. I rode 16 hours to Denver, CO, to watch a basketball game. I loved basketball.

And when I went to Duke, I was torn. I was a huge Longhorn fan. I couldn’t split my allegiance? But when I went to a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, I was completely sold. It is a completely different experience. I loved it so much.

After I finished Duke, and I moved to Denver, and I moved back to Austin, I was unemployed, and I was living with friends. And Duke was doing really well that year. I paid a lot of attention. I’d watch a lot of games. After watching, I would go on line for hours reading recaps of the same game I had just watched. I’d read different commentary on the same game (If they lost, I wouldn’t read anything).

In 2010, Duke was doing really well. They were going really far in the tournament and they made it to the Final Four and I was so excited. I was so thrilled.

Then My dear grandmother, Mary Katherine Huebel, fell. She had pretty severe Alzeimers and she fell and had to go to the hospital. My family called and I was free. I came down to Lake Jackson to stay with her over night for as long as needed. Like that, all of my passion, all of my excitement for basketball was gone: this is what matters. It was nice. It was fun, but it was ultimately fleeting. It was nice when it was there, but i did not miss it. I was needed. And I could tell that immediately because on the night of the championship game, I was stayingg in my grandmother’s room and I had it on mute. When Duke won, I mildly whispered, “Good job.”

For perspective, when I was in college, I went to a football game in Houston with my father and my brother and it was UT vs. Rice and my brother tried to kick me out of the stadium because I was so annoying. I would cheer at UT tackles and scream after every good play, even though the Longhorns were up 64-3. I was that kind of person.

And yet, when it came to it, I could let it go.

What have you sacrificed for your faith?

We are busy people. We are busy parents. We are busy kids. We are busy grandparents. We are busy sons and daughters. We are busy friends. We are busy fans. We are busy workers. We are busy vacationers. We are busy eaters.

The story of Enoch doesn’t take much space in Scripture. It is only a few verses at the beginning of Genesis. Genesis 5 is a chapter of genealogy. It goes from Noah to Abraham. It is pretty short and the words about Enoch are brief. Here they are. When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked with God. After Methuselah’s birth, Enoch lived 300 years; and he had other sons and daughters. In all, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God and disappeared because God took him. (Genesis 5:21-24, CEB)

Enoch walked with God.

What have you sacrificed for your faith?

We are busy people. I think about that because I am a busy person. Dominic is two but he is almost three, and when people ask, he calls himself three even though he is two. He is not three, he is two. Yesterday, he helped me lay some brick in the parsonage to cover up some holes. We used some broken bricks from a neighbor. He would pick up one of those little slivers and he would be so excited because he picked it up, and then he would be distracted by a pile of sand. It was really hard to get him away from the sand.

He is time consuming. Parenting takes up a lot of time. All of us, we are busy people. The main unifying factor for all of humanity is not gender or race or age, it is that we each have 24 hours in a day. Everybody. Young. Old. We each have the exact same amount of time, but we get to choose what we do with that.

The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics does a very large time use survey with a large sample across the United States. The most recent one is from 2013, so this is the time use of an average work day for people between 25-54 with children.

We are busy. There are not a lot of spots on that pie. Not a lot of extra space. As well, in this congregation, we are blessed with a lot of people who have said goodbye to their working lives and that is wonderful. They have fulfilled their able employment years. And so this next chart is for people aged 65 and above and what their leisure time is.

Even that segment is pretty occupied.

The last chart I want to show you is a little different. This goes to all people no matter the graphic. It is how many volunteer in a given day. This is basically on a scale of 0-100%. Who from every age bracket volunteers once a day?

What I found interesting about this chart is that the difference between 9.2 and 7.8 is not that much. Most of these margins are in the margin of error. There are not many people who are volunteering everyday. And it doesn’t happen that suddenly you retire and you volunteer more and more. We are busy people. We have a lot of things going on.

The comedian, Aziz Anzari, published recently a book called Modern Romance. He partnered with a sociologist out of NYU and it is the most rigorous book by a comedian that I have ever read. Dating today is very different than it was 20 years ago, or even five years ago. How online dating is so different from anything that came before. Ansari would get focus groups together and he would have people look at their online dating profiles together and talk about how they would do this thing that wasn’t really a thing twenty years ago. He also went through the history and he would look at video dating sites and the VHS ones with the music people dancing and you could leave a message in a box. It is really interesting.

But one of the things he would talk about was how a few years ago he was trying to see this girl and this relationship took place right around the time that young people transitioned to communicating primarily via text messages. And so he is texting back and forth with this girl and they spend a week trying to find a time to see each other. “Are you free?” “No, no, I can’t do that. “What about Friday?” “No, I can’t do Friday.” “What about Thai food?” “No, it is too spicy.” And they would do that over and over again until he said, “What if we get pizza after the game on Thursday.” And he had one of those phones where you can see when a message is read and he sees that she read it, but no response. Nothing. Is something wrong? What happened? Was she hit by lightening?

This idea and this fixation that we have so many options and so many opportunities but the issue of it is is that people are always thinking that something better is going to come along. People today do not like to commit to things because they are worried that something better is going to come along. The only reason that you would worry that something better might come along is if you thought what you were doing in the first place didn’t matter. That this mysterious thing in the future, this amazing party that you might miss, this amazing shopping deal that you might miss, that that is more important than what you are doing right now.

But Enoch walked with God and God took him.

As we saw with the children during children’s time, it is kind of tricky to walk with someone. It is not as intuitive as it seems. Everybody has a different pace. Everybody has a different gait.  Some people walk in straight lines. Some do not. Some people can talk to others fluidly while they walk. Some can only focus on themselves. It seems like this minor thing.

There is a pretty short list in Scripture of people who have been taken by God. The first is Enoch, the second is Elijah, who was the great prophet, and the third is Jesus.

And so out of an estimated 108 billion people who have ever lived, three have been taken. Jesus is kind of obvious. Elijah was the great prophet. Elijah did a lot of amazing things. He healed a lot of people. He spoke God’s word, but Enoch walked with God. So there’s got to be more going on.

To walk with someone is to be satisfied with them, it is to be content with them. If you are walking with someone and you don’t like them, you stop or you turn around. Like if you are walking your dog and you see a mean dog up the street and you just take a quick left to avoid them. Or if you see someone you don’t want to say hello to, you just turn around.

To walk with someone is to want to be with them. The fruit of faith is found in being more satisfied with God than with anything else. Being satisfied with God. Being content with God. Because in God we do not need to hide, we do not need to worry about our transcript or about our merit badges. In God, we do not need to pretend, we do not need to put on airs, we do not need to try to be something we are not. In God, we do not need to forget where we have come from. We need not forget who we are and where we are. In God, we need not ignore the realities of this world. We need not ignore the tragedy of this world or the joy and the beauty.

In John 10, Jesus says, “The thief enters only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came so that they could have life. Indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest.” That is what God brings to each of us. That we are loved before we are known. We are made justifed. We are forgiven, but God does not leave us there. God takes us along. God sanctifies us, makes us holy. God lets us live fully, lets us flourish. That is what God seeks for us. That is what God hopes for us. To be flourishing. To not be like I was, so self satisfied watching commentary on Duke basketball day after day. That is not what God desires of us, because that could be dropped in a minute, but what God wants is what will last.

One of the other distinctive characteristics of Methodists is that we think that it is important to provide opportunities to be with God, to flourish. Not only does God love us, does God forgive us and give us mercy, but that we God wishes for us to serve in this world. God does not wish us to stand on the sidelines. And, in fact, it is in serving God in the world that we are most ourselves, that we are most who we were created to be. That it is in loving others that we see God most clearly in this world.

And so I wanted to share with you all just a few of the opportunities at our church. So, if you can see on the projector, there are a few of them.

Celebrate Recovery United Methodist Men Methodist Ladies Texas Ramp Project The Neighbor Place Youth Group Sunday School (Children’s and Adult) New Horizons Respite Born Again Emporium Family Christian Learning Center Walk to Emmaus Technical Support and A/V The Linus Project The Food Pantry Recycling on Thursdays Sit and be Fit Prayer Garden Prayer Time Choir Handbells Worship at Towers Nursing Home Vacation Bible School Prayer Shawl Ministry Shepherding Team Church History

There is a lot going on here, right? And everyone of these came about because one of you wanted to serve God in a specific way. And some of these are not officially part of the church, right? I listed them, though, because some of you are so invested and involved that it is basically a ministry. It is an opportunity to serve others in God’s name. It is a gift that we get to do this together, for that is what God seeks for us. God seeks for us to serve together, to love together, for when we are alone, when we stay isolated, that is when we get off the path. If you are walking by yourself, it is really easy to miss a turn and to bump into a while and to get out of the way. When you are walking with someone else, you can keep each other accounatble, and you can make sure that you are going in the same direction. Some of us can see lights. Some of  us can’t see colors and so we don’t know when to go. We help each other out. When some of us are tired, others are not. When some of us are in need, others are there to lift them up. That is what being the church is about. And it is not just these things. These things aren’t merit badges for God. These things are not just for an application. These are opportunities to love God more in the world. To be who we were created to be. And they only exist because God has touched you. God has touched you and shown you how to follow him.

And so, My brothers and sisters, in this summer season, in this time as we talk about faith, as we hear stories of faith, as we study the scripture on faith, may you walk with God together with us. You have to have faith to do it. You have to have faith that being with God is more important than what is right in front of you. And that takes courage and conviction and it is hard to do it alone, but thanks be to God, we are not alone.

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

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Sermon Preached in Winchester, TX, on Jun 21, 2015

Text: Hebrews 11:1-4

What is it to have faith? What is it to have hope? How are we to know when we have faith? Faith is a word that is used to often in certain contexts that it is hard to explain, to define: what do we mean by faith? How would you explain faith to someone who isn’t a Christian? In the 11th chapter of Hebrews, it begins with this great definition: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. In reality, the word assurance is an inadequate translation. It should be reality. It is not just this subjective feeling in your heart. Faith is not just about the feelings for what is unseen, the feelings that God created everything, the feelings that Jesus is Lord, it is about the reality of it. It is acknowledging this reality. Faith is the disciples dropping their nets and following Jesus. It is the concrete act of seeing something greater in the man walking by the sea than the fish lying in their nets.

But how are we to know when we have faith?

Scripture uses this great metaphor of fruit. You’ll know the faith by its fruit. I didn’t really think about fruit a lot until I moved to Smithville and there was a pear tree in my yard. I didn’t know about raising fruit. College Station doesn’t have a lot of fruit trees. The soil is full of clay. There are a lot of crate myrtles; not much fruit.

In the first year I moved to Smithville, there was a drought. Thus, there was no fruit on the tree. We went through a season and thought, “Oh there is a nice tree in our side yard, don’t know what it is.” A year later, it is suddenly bearing a bundle of pears a day. It was healthy. It was happy. I could tell that because of the fruit that was there. I could see what was going on. It was still a pear tree when it wasn’t bearing fruit. It was still there. The evidence, though, for a novice like me was absent. “You’ll know the tree by its fruit.” That is what we see in scripture about faith and the fruit of faith.

Another way that fruit is expressed is in the stories of testimony, the stories of people coming to faith. And often those stories, for me, at least, can be kind of intimidating, because a lot of people have a lot more powerful experiences of faith than I did. Experiences of being alcoholics and hitting rock bottom and then Jesus tugging on their heart, transforming their lives. Experiences coming from rough child hoods and seeing mercy and forgiveness in the Lord. Jesus tells this story:

“A certain lender had two debtors. One owed enough money to pay five hundred people for a day’s work. The other owed enough money for fifty. When they couldn’t pay, the lender forgave the debts of them both. Which of them will love him more?” (Luke 7:41-42, CEB).

One person who 500 denarii, another owes 50. A metaphor for our day would be someone who is underwater on their house and another who has about $1,000 left on a car payment. Both debts are forgiven. Who is the more grateful on the debts? It is pretty clear who it is. For one is like, “that’s pretty nice, I get to go out a few extra times”. For the other, “My life is transformed and turned around.” Yet in both instances, God is the one who is glorified. And I think that that is the key to talking about the fruit of faith in that God is glorified in both the most dramatic stories and the most mundane. And when we point to God, that is point to the fruit of faith.

In this chapter from Hebrews that I read earlier, it talks about Cain and Abel in a unique way because it says that Abel’s sacrifice was deemed more fitting. So if you remember the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis, basically Cain and Abel are the first two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain brings a grain offering to God and Abel brings the offering of the lamb. And God judges Abel’s greater. He doesn’t say why, but Cain gets super jealous and kills his brother.

There are a lot of theories, but I think that one of the clear things about this story is that this is a pre-agricultural time. Cain wasn’t out there tilling the soil. He wasn’t planting the crops. Basically, he went around to plant flowers and brought them to God. Abel sacrificed his lamb and brought it to God. Who made the greater sacrifice? Cain picked flowers on the path, Abel’s lamb was gone. The only reason he would do that is by faith, is by seeing the glory of God as greater than the lamb. The glory of God is greater.

Now all through Scripture we have many instances of telling us that animal sacrifices aren’t exactly what God wants. In Hosea 6:6, God desires mercy not sacrifice. In Psalm 51, the psalmist says that a true sacrifice for the Lord is a broken and contrite heart. In Micah 6:8, it says, what does the Lord require of you but to seek justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. These are the sacrifices that God seeks, but they are not necessary for salvation. You don’t earn anything with these sacrifices. Instead, they are fruit. It is kind of like the pear tree. When the pear tree doesn’t bear fruit, it doesn’t cease to be a pear tree. Its just not healthy. There are many factors involved. When we don’t bear fruit, when we don’t make sacrifices, it is not because we cease to be loved by God. It is because we cease to be rooted in God.

For it says in the Gospel of Matthew, a good tree will bear good fruit. A good tree will not bear bad fruit. Again, what have you sacrificed for your faith? What is the fruit of your faith?

I like books. Some of you have been to the parsonage in Smithville and seen a lot of my books. When we moved to Smithville, there were about 55 boxes of books that were unloaded. I organized them all upon unpacking. I alphabetized and categorized them. Sometimes I re-alphabetize them just for fun. I love books. I have a number of books that are very dear to me.

One of them I brought. This is a copy of Paradise Lost that Alina gave me on our third date. It was right after we had started seeing each other. And at a later point she was going away for a while and so she sticky notes all through out that say i love you, that say Wilson I adore you. And they are sticky notes. It is not a big deal, but it means so much to me. It is a treasure.

I have another book I found at a thrift store that was for five dollars and it was an autographed copy of one of the most important theology texts of the 20th century: Rudolf Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament Volume 2. It was just at Half-Priced Books for five dollars. A beautiful work, probably $300 properly valued. And I just found it randomly and I treasure it.

I like books a lot. Books are the things that are hardest for me to give up. It is hard for me to let go of them. It is funny because we live in this culture where books are not as important as they used to be. Libraries are not as important as they used to be. Books used to be this thing you would give from one generation to another and just treasure. There are a lot more books in estate sales than there used to be. I remember when my grandparents passed away. I was the only one who cared in my family. And I went through all of the books and I sorted them into four different piles. Some were to donate to the library, and some were to give to certain people, and some were so damaged that they must be thrown away, and others I kept for myself.

It is hard to sacrifice my books in that way. So I think, when I read this text, what have I sacrificed for my faith? But things are often easier to get rid of than the grudges we keep. Often we hold onto grudges a lot tighter than we hold on to other things. We hold onto anger a whole lot tighter, we hold on to slights that may have happened years ago, and we just rip. And we don’t think about them. And we just put them out of our mind in the back of our head until we see the person that we are upset at and we can’t let go. And I think through this text we need to remember that when we hold on to things so tightly that we can’t let go, we are not holding on to God. And when we are holding on to grudges so tightly that we can’t let go, we are not holding on to God.

Abel had every reason to hold on to his lamb, but he did not. He gave it to God.

Another thing about me is that when I was 14, I became a vegetarian. I was living in Australia with my family and Australia has a different meat culture. There is a lot more lamb and mutton. And I would have mutton sandwiches every day. And I got sick of it and we were at a steakhouse. And I was like, “Alright, I’m out. No more meat.” And my parents were surprised. They had saved up money to take us to the steakhouse, but they were very supportive.

When I would tell people that I was a vegetarian, one of the first reactions would be, “Oh, I could never do that. I could never do that. I just love meat so much. I love bacon so much. I could never be a vegetarian.” It reminded me of this text, too, in that whatever we love too much that we can’t let go of it, that is what we are putting in the place of God. That is our root that we are holding onto.

If you would know a good tree by its fruit, you also know a good root by its fruit. As Jesus says in John 15, I am the vine and you are the branches. When you rest in me and I in you, you will  bear good fruit. When you rest of the root of my system, you will bear good fruit. Remain in me and I will remain in you. A branch can’t produce fruit by itself, but must remain in the vine. Likewise you can’t produce fruit unless you remain in me.

In the Methodist Church, we talk about the three graces of God. We talk about prevenient grace, the grace that comes before. The grace that comes before we know God. The grace that is present with each of the people we know that don’t know God. That God has sought us out and loved us independnt of our acknowledgement of him.

We believe in justifying grace, that God touches us to our core and gives us mercy and forgiveness and washes us clean.

And we also believe in sanctfiying grace, that kind meets us where we are, but does not leave us where we are. That God transforms us, that God continues to form us through the disciplines of faith, of community, through worship, through the Holy Spirit. And the fruit of faith is the action of sanctifying grace in our life.

We are not justified by showing the fruit of our faith, we are not justified by the sacrifice but we reveal God transforming us in them. And grace comes in the midst of brokenness. And this week as much as anytime, I was reminded of the brokenness of this world.

In 1760, a slave was born in Pennsylvania. His name was Richard Allen. His master owned a number of slaves. And one day when Richard was about 16, his owner went to a Methodist tent revival. And the preacher there was powerful that Richard’s owner went home and freed all his slaves.

Richard Allen moved to Philadelphia as a freedman around the time of the revolution, and he started preaching in Methodist circuits. When the Methodist Episcopal Church began right after the revolution, he was appointed to speak at a church, but only at 8am and only to colored congregations. Eventually Richard got so frustrated that he was being pushed out by the white churches that in 1793 he started Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

In 1816, Richard organized with a number of other methodist preachers, the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. One of those churches was founded in Charleston, SC. In 1822, that church was burned to the ground by whites in Charleston who were afraid of a slave revolt that started there. Denmark Vesey, one of the founders of Emmanuel AME was hung.

In 1834, that church was banned because black churches were banned in South Carolina. Freed slaves were not allowed to worship Jesus. Freed slaves were not allowed to teach how to read and write.

This history of strength through brokenness was not lost on the man who went to a prayer meeting last Wednesday and sat for an hour and then kill nine people. He didn’t life in Charleston. He researched that this was an important church in the history of African Americana and he went there and he prayed with them and then he killed them.

There is brokenness in this world. Yet two days later, when he was arraigned, some of the children of the people who were killed, addressed the man who shot their parents and pastor. And they said that they wish Jesus’s mercy on him and Christ’s forgiveness and that they do not hate him.

That is a hard thing to do. That story was printed in Newspapers around the country and I think that that misses the fact that that was an impossibly hard thing to do. To know that your family was killed for the color of their skin and to still have mercy on the person who had done this. To still show forgiveness that glorifies God.

And that points to hope in a way that glorifies God. And it justify what happened. It doesn’t take away the consequences of what happened, but their faith was so strong that it did not turn to hatred at attrocity.

That story is dramatic and beautiful, but there are fruits of faith in our life, that may not come from televised events but from simple acts of kindness, mercy that is there.

If you want to be left alone in your life, than you need to worship another God, because the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not leave us to our own desires. Faith is the assurance of things hope for. Faith is looking beyond what we simply desire in front of us, but desiring the transformation of God in this world. Faith is realizing the brokenness in this world before us, but saying that that is not all that there is. There is hope in this world. The fruit of faith points to that hope.

So today, in this week, in this time of summer, I pray that each of us can find ways of pointing to that hope. And again, it is not about the dramatic story, it is about glorifying God. It is about being grateful and thankful. Showing mercy when its unwarranted. Showing kindness, when it is not necessary. Going beyond what you need to do. Seeing your comfort as secondary to the person beside you.

And so may God transform us in that way this week.

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

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A Sermon Preached in Winchester, TX, on June 7, 2015

Text: Mark 3:20-35

The People don't understand what Jesus is doing. They don't understand who Jesus is. The beginning of the third chapter of the Gospel of Mark starts with Jesus coming back to the Temple in Jerusalem and there is a man with a withered arm. It is on the Sabbath day. Jesus sees this man with the withered arm and he walks over and heals him. The Pharisees are like, "Whoa, not today! You have to wait until tomorrow to do things like that!" Right afterwards, Jesus goes to find his disciples. He goes up and calls them and gathers them together all by name. Some of us had to memorize those names when we were little, I never did, but I know a lot of you did. Then he goes down to Nazareth, to his home town, and that's when this text from Mark begins.

He goes down to Nazareth and it is crowded and the people don't know what to think. It is very fitting that we read this text today with 1 Samuel, when the people say to Samuel, "We need a King!" Because in that instance, too, the people don't know what they're looking for. And its one of those things where Samuel is so brutally honest but the people have their minds set on something so much that it doesn't matter. And it reminds me of dealing with youth. That is one of the things I do in Smithville. Talking to youth that are so focussed that they have found the love of their life at 13 and there is nothing in the world that can dissuade them from it. And you talk to them and reason with them, all the life they have to life, all the things going forward, how they've only known this person six hours, but it doesn't matter. They have decided and no reason can change it.

That is like the people in Samuel. They know they need a king. They're not going to listen to all the bad things that kings bring. They know that they need a king.

But when Jesus shows up, he doesn't look like the king they're expecting, so they think he comes from the devil. They think he comes from Beelzebub. So Jesus brings up this famous line that Lincoln used. The funny thing about it is that while Lincoln, in 1858, when he gave this speech (as a state senator in a Illinois running against Douglas), he was talking about the Union. A house divided against itself cannot stand. We're either going to be a slave nation or a free nation. There is no halfway.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is talking about the devil. What Jesus is saying is, if you think the devil is casting out the devil, you're not taking him seriously enough. You're calling him stupid. Because a house divided against itself will not stand. You're not taking his threat seriously. Jesus says,

When Jesus called them together he spoke to them in a parable: "How can Satan throw Satan out? A kingdom involved in civil war will collapse. And a house torn apart by divisions will collapse. If Satan rebels against himself and is divided, then he can’t endure. He’s done for. (Mark 3:23-26 CEB)

And what Jesus points to is the logic of these people. "Oh, Satan is going to take care of himself. Oh, evil is going to take care of itself. We just need to focus on our own things and it will go away. It is going to destroy itself."

And Jesus is like, "No, No, you are not taking the threat seriously. You're not giving enough credit. You don't even realize who I am and why I came to free this world." And it reminds me of another parable that Jesus says. In Matthew 13, Jesus talks about the sowing of the seeds.

Jesus says that there was a man that sowed seeds and some fell on the pathway, and some fell on the shallow ground right outside the pathway, and others fell on the good soil. And all the people are like, "what do you mean? what do seeds have to do with God?" And so, frustrated, Jesus explains, "Hear the parable of the sower explained."

"Whenever people hear the word about the kingdom and don’t understand it, the evil one comes and carries off what was planted in their hearts. This is the seed that was sown on the path." Which, I can imagine, if you ever try to plant seed on the road, it is not going to grow that well. It is going to get rushed away. It is going to get crushed

"As for the seed that was spread on rocky ground, this refers to people who hear the word and immediately receive it joyfully. Because they have no roots, they last for only a little while. When they experience distress or abuse because of the word, they immediately fall away." I think of this especially after the rains came this past month. Because, everything that wasn't fixed down floated away. We had a cat at the church that knocked off her color the day before the rains came. And at 5:00pm on that Monday, I went down to the church in Smithville, there was about six inches of water on the road. That color had floated away. It was not in good soil.

"As for the seed that was spread among thorny plants, this refers to those who hear the word, but the worries of this life and the false appeal of wealth choke the word, and it bears no fruit." I think of this in a lot of grass with stickerburrs. When I think of thorns, I think of stickerburrs. Because, most of my growing up, when you're a child, a good place to play is a place without stickerburrs. You can't really play in a place with stickerburrs. And so it doesn't matter how nice the grass looks or how good the lawn is, if it is full of burrs, you have to avoid it, you have to keep it away.

"As for what was planted on good soil, this refers to those who hear and understand, and bear fruit and produce—in one case a yield of one hundred to one, in another case a yield of sixty to one, and in another case a yield of thirty to one." (Matthew 13:19-23 CEB)

What reminded me of this passage is that Jesus takes the threat of the evil one seriously in a way that the people do not. You can't say that Satan is going to cast out Satan. You can't say that if you disagree with someone, if that live up to your expectations, than it comes from your enemy. But this gets Jesus to say one of the more confusing passages in all of Scripture, when he says, whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness.

What is the blasphemy against the holy spirit? What is the sin against the holy spirit? I've studied a lot of this, a lot of people have for two thousand years, it is still not that clear. There are a lot of theories. What is the sin against the Holy Spirit? What is this thing that cannot be forgiven? Thomas Aquinas, the 13th Century theologian, listed six sins that could qualify for this.

He said:

despair: which consists in thinking that one's own malice is greater than Divine Goodness, as the Master of the Sentences teaches,[4] presumption: if a man wants to obtain glory without merits[5] or pardon without repentance[6] resistance to the known truth, envy of a brother's spiritual good, i. e. of the increase of Divine grace in the world, impenitence, i.e., the specific purpose of not repenting a sin, obstinacy, whereby a man, clinging to his sin, becomes immune to the thought that the good searched in it is a very little one.

These are not killer sins. When we often think of sin, these are not the ones that come to mind. A lot of these (obstinancy, impenitence) these are common things that a lot of us come across in our daily life. And I think that was is so central for what Jesus is pointing out here is a) all sin functions on a horizontal level. In God’s eye, all sin functions on this horizontal level. There is not this greater sin and this lesser sin. The consequences of sin are different, but the actual sin is simply the heart turned away from God. And so the little white lie you tell your child or the great sin of a murderer are both on the level of deceptions and turning away from God. There are both instances where you put yourself in the place of God to adjudicate truth or justice apart from the created order. And yet the hope in that is that there is forgiveness for all, as Jesus says.

Truly I tell you all sins shall be forgiven the sons of man and whatever blasphemies they utter. All of these will be forgiven. All of these are covered over. And yet we are left with this confusing phrase: what is the sin against the Holy Spirit?

I think the best way to see that is to see what is going on just before. To see when Jesus casts out this demon. I think Jesus is talking about the fact that the person who had the demon cast out of him is still loved and forgiven. That just because they had a bad spirit in them, that does not mean that they need to be cast off from society. This is his immediate position.

And then he pushes back against the Pharisees. But what I think is so important and what I think we should remember is that if Jesus really the sin against the Holy Spirit were something we should actively worry about, he would talk more about it. He doesn’t. He mentions it here, in Luke, in Matthew it is mentioned in one sentence, but that’s it. Jesus talks about a lot of things. He talks about a lot of things that we should worry about. He talks against hypocrites. He talks about how we should be servants in love.

He mentions this in passing. And so I think a hopefulness that we can come to is that were blasphemy against the Holy Spirit something we should worry about consistently, Jesus would have said more things about it. Instead, what the Gospel of Mark moves to is Jesus talking about his family. And I think this is where our hope comes in this passage, because it is not that hopeful. It starts off with Demons and then we hear about this unforgivable sin. And then Jesus starts talking about family. He is talking and his mother and his brothers arrive and they are standing outside. Remember, it is a crowded room. So they send word inside, “Hey Jesus! Its us. Come on out. I know you’ve been with these people for a long time. We want to talk you. They’ve had their chance with you, now it is our turn.”

But Jesus replies back, “who are my mother and my brothers?” Whoever does the will of God. He is my brother and my sister and my mother.” And the hope in this is that the requirement of the family of God is not this perfection in the law, is not this perfection in righteousness, it is the desire to do the will of God. The inclusion with God is not about being pure from evil spirits or pure from sin, for all of those can be forgiven. It is not being pure on the sabbath. Instead, it is for those who do the will of God. And i think back to Samuel talking to the people about what a king is going to do, a king was going to demand this of you, a king was going to demand tithes, a king was going to demand service, a king is going to demand great works. What does Jesus demand of us?

Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. Thus, for us today, we can say that if we are doing the will of God, we are the brother and sister of Jesus Christ. For that is what it means to be a Christian, that is what it means to be a follower of Christ.

We are in this family of God with these bonds that are stronger, these bonds that are not founded by happenstance but founded by the love of Christ in this world. That there is hope for us and that there is hope for others. That there is forgiveness for us and forgiveness for others.

And so as we go forth this week and this time and this summer, that instead of the king that demands our fealty, our savior asks us to be his brother and his sister, asks us for our will and our love. And so all we need do is to give it.

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

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