The Mayberry Preacher

DRAWING LARGE, SHOUTING LOUD

Luke 4: 16-30; Isaiah 61: 1-3b
Steve Lindsley
January 29, 2012

If it happened in 2012, you know how it would’ve gone down.  CNN and FOX and all the others would’ve broken into their daily stream to report the breaking news. Newspapers would drape huge headlines across the top of the front page, the kind reserved for special occasions.  All the local networks would be scrambling to schedule an exclusive interview in their studio.  Family and friends would send out mass emails and text messages to get the word out. 

At the synagogue, life as they once knew it would be no more.  They’d be struggling to accommodate the crowd expected to descend upon them.  Folding chairs would be set up in every space possible.  Large speakers would be erected outside the sanctuary so the masses unable to get inside could still hear him speak.  Part of the parking lot next door would be leased out for television trucks with satellite dishes so they could broadcast all of it live.  And no doubt a handful of ingenious entrepreneurs would position themselves in the mix, eagerly selling specially-designed t-shirts, caps, bumper stickers, and key chains.

You have to figure that’s pretty much how it’d all happen if Jesus’ homecoming took place today.  In a time where news travels as fast as the stream in our television cable or the speed of our internet connection, in a world where we seem to possess an insatiable desire to hype things to the greatest extent, no stone would be left unturned, no angle left unexamined, no sub-plot unexplored as Jesus – that “Wonder-kid” visited by kings at his birth, who wowed the temple scholars as a young boy, who already had made a name for himself in just a few short months of preaching – when Jesus took time out of his new-found celebrity to come back home.

But you and I know it wasn’t like that almost 2000 years ago in the little town of Nazareth.  There was no 24-hour news cycle, no internet, no newspapers, no television studios.  There was simply a town of people who had heard through word of mouth – as they always heard things – about Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s boy, and what he’d been up to recently.  They’d watched him grow from a child into an astute teacher, a captivating preacher, and maybe, just maybe even more than that.  And the greatest part was that he was one of their own.  He was one of them.

So when it first came around that Jesus was coming home – perhaps his mother knew first, as mothers usually do, and she shared it with her neighbor, and it spread like wildfire from there – when word got around that Jesus was coming home, nothing could quell their excitement.  They packed the sanctuary that day to hear the hometown boy read scripture and comment on it – a tradition for Hebrew males.  When Jesus stepped up front, I imagine you could’ve heard a pin drop as the gathering waited in excitement to hear what he’d say.  He unrolled the scriptures, as they were written on scrolls back then – and proceeded to read verses from the great prophet Isaiah, words read earlier this morning:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

And to this, Jesus simply added:

You’ve just heard this scripture come true in your presence.

It was a home run!  Jesus couldn’t have said anything better to those hometown folks.  And the thing was, it wasn’t just about seeing the local boy make good.  It wasn’t just about pride.  Jesus had just told them that he was coming to change things.  And those folks from Nazareth desperately wanted things to change.  Those people were an oppressed people, a poor people, a suffering people.  Life had been unbearable.  And now the native son – the one who had done marvelous things elsewhere – now Jesus was coming home to do the same.

And all would’ve gone superbly, and everyone would’ve been perfectly happy had it simply stopped there.  Jesus’ homecoming would’ve been a huge success, and people would’ve talked about it for years.  Maybe the mayor would’ve given him a key to the city, and the city council erect a monument in his honor.  Maybe there would’ve been a parade down Main Street and designate it as “Jesus Day,” and the kids would have gotten out of school for it.

But none of that was going to happen.  Because Jesus knew something the hometown folk did not – that his calling, his mission, his very reason for being was not just about them.  Jesus’ mission was bigger and bolder than they could possibly imagine, or even want.  And so Jesus recounts two stories that would’ve been familiar to those Jews; albeit ones they would rather forget.  The great prophet Elijah, during a terrible famine, once gave food to a widow from Sidon – a hated foreigner – even when there were plenty of Israelite widows who needed help too.  His successor Elisha bypassed all of the lepers in Israel to heal one from Syria.

Now, just in case you're wondering, this wasn't exactly the most politically-correct thing Jesus could've said here.  I once heard someone remark that a sure-fire way to go from a hero to a zero is to remind people of the painful realities of their own history. So what Jesus said in the temple that day was akin to someone going to modern-day Germany and bringing up Hitler and the Third Reich, or going to Apple headquarters out in California and talking about the recently-discovered human rights violations at their plants in China.  In other words, it's the last thing the crowd wants to hear you mention.

So if Jesus had those hometown folk eating out of his hand and ready to give him the keys to the city earlier, now he couldn’t have said anything that would’ve drawn more of their wrath and rage.  They turned on him on a dime.  And scripture tells us that they ran him out of that temple and actually tried to kill him, so angered they’d become at their native son.

Now psychologists and sociologists would observe this scene with great interest.  They would certainly highlight the dynamics of the group mob and how quickly it can go from one extreme to the other.  And it does leave us wondering how in the world things could have changed so suddenly – I mean, seriously, wanting to throw Jesus off a cliff??  One scholar surmised that the crowd in the temple that day saw Jesus” declaration of fulfillment as a promise of special favor for his own people and his ‘hometown.’”   If that was the case, then Jesus’ response must’ve felt like they were being disowned and he was turning his back on the community who raised and nurtured him.  Perhaps that was part of their anger.  But there had to be something else, too.  I wonder what it could’ve been?

Flannery O’Connor, the well-known Southern writer, was once asked why she persisted in creating such freakish characters in her short-story fiction.  And I love her response.  She said: To the almost blind, you must draw very large; and to the almost deaf, you just have to shout loud.   In other words, the only way you’re going to get your message across, especially if it’s one the people won’t easily recognize or don’t want to hear, is to be bold in proclamation and extend the boundaries far and wide.

Think of the people down through history who’ve made a point of drawing large and shouting loud.  A few weeks ago we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, honoring a man who went to great lengths to bring to light the civil injustices that persist in our society.  Others on that list: Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi, just to name a few.  At a time when our world needed things to change, these individuals and many others did what needed to be done to make that change happen.

The problem, of course, is that people don’t always like it when you draw large and shout loud.  They don’t always respond well to that sort of thing.  They might shoot you, as they did to King.  Or they might throw you in prison, like Nelson Mandela.  Or the people might run you out of the synagogue and try to throw you off a cliff.  Which is exactly what this crowd at Jesus’ homecoming tried to do when they began to understand just how large and how loud his mission on earth really was. 

If this story about Jesus' homecoming is about anything, it's about that uncomfortable “rub” we feel when we realize that the gospel message Jesus came to convey is not about a special few, but about everyone – challenging our understanding of who is “in” and who is “out” and who is deserving of God’s grace and love and mercy.  About the essence of not only our relationship with God, but our relationship with each other and with the world around us.  And honestly, that sort of stuff can really tick people off!

The Gospel has a way of doing that, doesn’t it?  Oh, we can try to fashion it into a form that’s more digestible.  We can water things down to nothing more than the Golden Rule and “loving your neighbor” – the “neighbor,” of course, being someone who’s easy to love.  We can do away with, or at least minimize, the elements of our faith that are hard to deal with – like Jesus asking us to deny father and mother, or God’s judgment on his own people, or the “Pauls” in our midst who never stop nagging us about church imperfections.  We can draw small and whisper quietly if we want to.  But if we do, the gospel isn’t the gospel anymore.  It’s not good news – it’s no-news.    

Jesus spent a lifetime in three years telling us and showing us how much God loves us.  But he never said that this love was designed to make us feel comfortable.  There is nothing comfortable about the gospel, my friends.  If we aren’t shaken by God’s radical love, if we aren’t a little irked with how large Jesus draws and how loud Jesus shouts, then maybe we’re in the wrong crowd.  Maybe we’re part of that synagogue crowd, the hometown folk, expecting special favors and preferential treatment. 

No, the crowd you and I should be part of is the crowd that never places expectations or limits on Jesus’ love.  The crowd you and I should be part of is the crowd that understands the gospel does not belong to any one denomination, church, or group of people.  It belongs to and is for everyone.  It is not ours to mold or shape to our conveniences, to our whims, to our preferences.  The crowd you and I should be part of is the crowd that recognizes and receives God’s wonderful grace not only for ourselves and those like us, but for those not at all like us.  And the question the gospel forces us to confront, the question Jesus asks us with his very life, is quite simple: which crowd are you part of?

You know, part of me feels a little bad for Jesus that his homecoming ended the way it did.  I kind of wish things would’ve turned out differently.  And yet, another part of me is eternally grateful that Jesus – then and throughout his life – stuck to his mission and persisted in living out the radical ramifications of God’s everlasting love; drawing large and shouting loud, even with a human race that just can’t seem to wrap their minds and hearts around this whole grace thing.  For that grace, as the old hymn says, is what “leads us home.”  And maybe – just maybe – that’s where the real homecoming takes place.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

(Flannery O'Connor quote from “Heroes and Zeroes,” Homiletics 16 no. 4, January-February 2004: 34.)

SIN BOLDLY!

Galatians 1: 11-17, 2:19-21
Steve Lindsley
January 22, 2012

The 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is weird – the kind of weird I like in movies.  And yet, for all its eclectic nature and odd twists and turns, the main storyline is pretty basic: a love story between a man and a woman.  What’s more basic than that?  Jim Carrey plays the reserved Joel, and Kate Winslet the impulsive Clementine.  Now the cinematography makes it kind of hard to follow, but the basic plot goes like this: Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl start dating.  Boy and girl get serious.  Boy and girl start having some problems.  And here’s where the eclectic part comes in: Girl pays a visit to a company that specializes in erasing painful memories from one’s mind.  Girl wants to completely forget everything about Boy, as if their relationship never happened. 

Boy is subsequently puzzled and distraught when Girl treats him as if she never knew him – which, in a sense, is the case.  Boy later finds out what Girl did and decides to go through the same thing to erase her from his memory as well.   

Like I said, it’s a weird movie!  The good news is that the movie actually has a happy ending; as Boy and Girl manage to find each other a second time and fall in love all over again.  It’s the kind of ending my wife loves!  But what stuck with me after I turned the TV off wasn’t the romantic storyline.  What kept churning around in my head was this whole notion of erasing bad memories. 

I mean, think about it.  Every one of us has our “skeletons in the closet;” things we’ve done or stuff that’s happened that we regret and would love to forget about if we could.  And I daresay that if the technology really did exist, a lot of folks would jump at the chance to erase their bad memories.  I mean, think of the painful pasts that could be eliminated forever – a bad relationship, an accident of some sort, or, in my case, the 29 I got on a Calculus exam my freshman year in college.  Believe me, I’d love to get that out of my head! 

But we can’t do that, can we?  I’m hopelessly stuck with that 29 for the rest of my life!  So instead we try to sweep those things under the carpet, keep them under wraps.  We don’t bring them up in conversation; we certainly don’t drawn attention to them if we can help it.  And God willing, they’ll remain out of sight and out of mind, hopefully never to resurface and reveal themselves to anyone, including ourselves.   That’s just human nature to want that.

Which is why, I think, you and I are left collectively scratching our heads when we read today’s scripture.  Because for some reason, the apostle Paul, writing his letter to the church in Galatia, goes against the grain and actually brings up his checkered past. A past that took place before Jesus paid him a little visit on the road to Damascus; before he became the great spokesperson for the early church and our faith’s first missionary and theologian.

That past included, among many things, a different name: Saul.  It included his zealous and unbending hatred toward those misguided people who’d later be known as “Christians.” It included Saul traveling around Palestine, writing synagogue leaders and asking for the names and addresses of those in their flock who leaned a little too much to the Jesus side of things.  It included Saul paying these folks a visit and using his “persuasive powers” (otherwise known as “threats”) to bring them back to the fold.  Saul’s past was about a man who did everything in his power to see that the Christian movement was wiped of the face of the earth.

Now granted, Paul was a bold soul who didn’t shy away from speaking his mind.  But as one who devoted his post-Damascus life to building bridges in Christian circles, as one who was trying to build up the church instead of tearing it down, surely the last thing he’d want to do was dredge up his own horrible past.  And you know there were plenty of skeptics in the bunch who were never quite comfortable around Paul, who always assumed he had some hidden-agenda thing going on and would turn on them in an instant.

So why – why in the world would Paul have wanted to bring up his past?  I don’t know.  Maybe there was no use denying it, since everyone already knew it.  Kind of like a seasoned politician who decides to “face the music” rather than look like he’s hiding something.  Perhaps he’d retain some credibility that way.  Maybe that’s why.

Maybe.  But you know, I can’t help but think there’s more to this than just that. See, Paul was a smart guy, but he wasn’t in it for himself.  His primary concern – in everything he did and everything he wrote, was simple: to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.  That was his sole motivation.  That’s what he was all about.

And if anyone knew anything about the life-changing effect of that gospel, how it can turn someone’s life around 180 degrees, it certainly was Paul.  That little encounter with Jesus had made Paul an entirely new person, totally different from who he used to be.  Even the name change – Saul to Paul – symbolized that.  And that is how Paul was able to trumpet the Christian cause when he formerly sought to snuff it out; that’s how he was able to preach “Christ crucified” when before he worked to see that those followers suffered the same fate as their Master.  That’s how Paul could claim his troubled past – because it was proof in and of itself of the power of the gospel to radically change lives.

I wonder if you’ve seen the cartoon clipping posted on the wall outside my office.  It’s a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon where Calvin’s father is pulling into the driveway, grabbing his suitcase and getting out of his car after presumably a long day at work.  His day is about to get even longer.  That’s because he is greeted there by his mischievous son Calvin, sheepish grin on his face, holding high a sign that says in big letters, “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin!”  Calvin’s pre-emptive act is surely a sign of some bad news that awaits his father once he gets inside the house.

Now I’ve always liked this cartoon – perhaps because it reminds me in a way of my own past, although I would’ve never been clever enough to think up that whole sign thing.  No, I think what has always drawn me to this cartoon, and the reason it’s been posted in my office in both churches I’ve served, is because it depicts in simple form, in a one-panel cartoon, the bare-bones predicament of humanity.  We are creations of the living God – and yet we are sinners.  We try to be good – and even so, we still fail.  We want to do what is pleasing to God – but somehow we find a way to do the exact opposite.  And so it is now us – we are the ones standing in that driveway, holding that sign high and wearing that sheepish grin, waiting for judgment to come rolling up the driveway.  That is our plight.  That is our little human predicament. 

You know, I’ll never forget one of my seminary professors and something she said to us.  Or showed us, really.  Her name was Isabel Rodgers, but we all called affectionately her “Dr. Izzie.”  It was a t-shirt Dr. Izzie wore on the day her theology class talked about Martin Luther. Luther, she told us, had written a letter to a friend who was struggling with this “sin and sinner” stuff – a struggle Luther knew all too well himself.   And I’ll never forget what Dr. Izzie told us he wrote.  Listen:

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not fictitious grace. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly…..

This t-shirt of hers was a stark contrast to her regular class attire – usually a blouse with slacks or skirt.  The shirt was navy blue, short-sleeve with white lettering; the block kind you used to get ironed on at the sporting goods store.  And it simply read: SIN BOLDLY!  How about that!  Our esteemed seminary professor – the first female moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), in fact! – showing up for class with a t-shirt that said, SIN BOLDLY! 

Now there are those who might take issue with her doing this.  There may be some who get their feathers ruffled by this notion of “sinning boldly,” thinking the last thing the world needs is people sinning with encouragement and enthusiasm.

And that would be a travesty, if that’s what ol’ Martin Luther meant.  But it wasn’t.  What Luther was trying to get at the limitlessness of God’s mercy – addressing the reality of sin for the Christian and God’s capacity to forgive those who put their trust in the cross.  Luther is imploring us to acknowledge and confess our troubled past – but he is also pushing us to recognize the power of God’s grace in that past, and how that grace shapes our present and our future. Sin boldly, he said, but rejoice in Christ even more boldly…

You know, sometimes I think God sits up in Heaven – if “up” is where God and Heaven are – I think God sits up there and looks down on us and shakes the almighty head back and forth.  And God says it, over and over again, as if one day it might make a difference: Don’t they get it??  Don’t they understand??  Because even the best of us still live our lives as if we’ve heard only half of the gospel – as if its worship, and we’ve confessed our sins, but forgotten all about the Assurance of Pardon.

We continue to want to bury the ugly past, fooling ourselves into thinking it’ll just go away.  We want to brush aside the self-centered things we’ve done, or the horrible thoughts that run through our mind and come from only God knows where.  We want so much to deny our cynicism or our greed or our envy or our apathy.  And God calls out: Don’t they get it??  Don’t they understand?? And we don’t.

And we won’t – not until we follow Paul’s lead; a man who “sinned boldly,” as Luther might say.  Not until we see the radical way that God changed him inside and out, and realize that God can do the exact same thing in you and in me.  Not until we come face to face with all of our skeletons, all our regret, all our painful pasts; and rather than avoid them, head straight into them.  Because it is there, in all the messiness of life, where God does God’s most amazing and glorious work.

You know, it took a day or two for me to fully process that movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  And I’ll admit, there is something attractive about erasing bad memories and starting with a clean slate.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that doesn’t really solve anything. 

That’s because when all is said and done, our relationship with Jesus is not about what we’ve done or haven’t done, but about what God has done and is still doing.  It is because of our faults, because of our sins, because of our humanity, that we know God in the intimate way we do.  Not as Master or Teacher or Leader.  Not as a wise sage, or a powerful revolutionary.  Not even as Lord.  No, you and I come to know Jesus as Friend – one who loves us even when we are unlovable, one who claims us even when we are unworthy, and one who forgives us even when the world might cringe in horror if they could see what’s really inside. 

So maybe Luther had a point: “Sin Boldly!”  Let me hear you say it: SIN BOLDLY!  Not because you should sin, but because you will.  Claim your past; claim your imperfections – because there is power in embracing every last bit of who you are.  And know this: God always remembers, and God always loves.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

NOT A PERIOD, BUT A COMMA

1 Samuel 3: 1-10
Steve Lindsley
January 15, 2012

You can tell when someone is listening to you – I mean, really listening to you.  They’re not sitting there playing with their cell phone; they’re not distracted watching TV or reading a book.  No – when someone is really listening to you, you have every bit of their attention.  They are looking at you, and there’s this look in their eyes that lets you know they’re fully engaged in what you’re saying.  When you tell them something bad, their face cringes up.  When it’s something funny, they may even laugh.  And you don’t need to repeat anything or remind them of something you said a few sentences back.  You have their full an undivided attention.  And you know what?  It’s a good feeling to be listened to!

Now I’m probably like a lot of you – I don’t always do a good job of letting someone know that I’m listening to them.  So this past week I did an experiment of sorts – I made a concentrated effort in “intentional intense listening.”  Whenever someone spoke to me about something, I did my best to stop whatever I was doing, look at the person, and hear them out.  And when I did, here are some of the things I heard people tell me:

• I heard someone voice concern about how they were sick but the sickness hadn’t been diagnosed yet.  They were going to a lot of doctors and they were all telling her different things.  It was pretty frustrating for her.
• I had someone express fear and anxiety about upcoming surgery.  They were glad to have a date on the calendar, but still very nervous about all the “what-if’s.”
• I heard frustration with the grown children of a close friend who is struggling with old age and is still living in their home when they really should be placed in a full-care facility.
• I heard a lot of people express concern and prayers for the Zeller family, friends to many of us, whose six-year old son Nathan had a seizure this past week and is still recovering at Brenner's Hospital.
• I heard a new parent express joy and relief that their baby was finally starting to sleep through the night.
• And I heard excitement from a nine-year old I’m particularly close to about some lyrics he recently wrote for his next rap song.

So that’s what I heard this week when I made the effort to really listen.  The thing is, though, listening isn’t always easy.  Or, to put it another way, sometimes it’s hard discerning exactly what it is that you’re hearing.  Signals get crossed, voices get muddled.  It’s especially the case when it’s God that’s speaking to us; trying to tell us something important, trying to show us the way.  Listening can get really hard then.

Just ask the two people we find in the scripture that Bruce read earlier.  You know, I don’t think it’s by chance that this lectionary passage falls on the Second Sunday of Epiphany – that often-neglected day in the life of the church when we celebrate the arrival of the three kings to the manger and the revelation of God’s coming in the newborn baby Jesus.  Sometimes that enlightenment is as clear as a bright star in the night sky.  Other times, though, the voice of the Lord is one we often mistaken for something – or someone – else.  That’s what’s going on in this story of Samuel and Eli in the temple – hearing, but not really listening.  Seeing, but not really perceiving.  Confusion in that moment of epiphany. 

And you know, I love the way the writer of Samuel starts things off.  With his opening words in the third chapter we are informed that, even though all this took place thousands and thousands of years ago, in a time where we’re tempted to think that God’s miracles and visions were an everyday occurrence, instead we are told this:

The word of the Lord was rare in those days,
Visions were not widespread.

So from the very opening sentence, we are not just reading a story – we are in it; right in the thick of it.  I mean, when was the last time an angel of the Lord – a true bonafide angel – appeared in your living room to deliver a message?  When was the last time waters were parted in your presence, or prophets carried up into the heavens in chariots of fire?  When was the last time dry brittle bones were suddenly enfleshed and brought back to life, right before your very eyes?

Exactly.  Those sorts of things don’t happen all that much in our day and time.  And they weren’t happening much in Samuel’s and Eli’s, either.

It’s the dead of night, we are told.  Almost dawn – the lamp of the temple; the lamp that would stay on all night to keep the place illuminated in darkness – the lamp hadn’t gone out yet.  There are two sleeping in the temple.  One is Eli, the old priest who’d been there for years, who had served God faithfully day in and day out, who had seen it all and heard it all.  The other is Samuel, a young boy, raised in the temple by the priest, his protégé.

And so early on this morning, not quite yet dawn, in a time when the word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread, God spoke.  But God didn’t speak to the faithful priest, as one might expect.  Instead, it came to the boy Samuel, who had no idea what to do with it.  Because these kinds of things didn’t happen.  He assumed it was Eli, so Samuel went into his quarters and asked the priest what he wanted.  Woken from his slumber, Eli told the boy he was mistaken – he did not call him – and told him to go back to bed.  This happened a second time, and then a third time.  And it was on the third time that Eli realized something else was going on here.  This was not the boy’s imagination. He was hearing a voice, and that voice belonged to God.  So Eli sends him back to his room, and directs Samuel to respond next time with the well-known: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

Now – before we go on further, before we get into the heart of this sermon about how and what it means to really listen to God, I want to deviate just a second to make note of something here that often goes unnoticed, overlooked, not listened to.  See, I don’t think it was insignificant that God chose to speak to the boy Samuel instead of the seasoned priest Eli.  Nor do I think we should ignore the fact that Eli discounted Samuel with each early morning waking and had to be hit over the head with it until he saw it for what it was.     

You know, we live in a culture – especially here in the rural south – where a whole lot of authority and deference is placed in the lap of the preacher.  And somehow we make this assumption that they have this “hotline to God,” if you will.  And it’s not just within the church.  Sometimes I walk around feeling like I’m wearing a t-shirt that says, “Ask me that question you’ve always wanted an answer for.”  Plane trips where total strangers sitting next to me will feel license to disclose their entire life story.  Random emails from someone who wants me to explain a tragedy in their life.  All because of what I do for a living.

I’ll never forget the story of a minister colleague of mine; about how he and some buddies of his were out golfing one Saturday afternoon in the spring.  They were on the back nine when the clouds came unexpectedly and the bottom fell out.  And as they huddled together under the shelter, avoiding the torrential rain and watching their afternoon slip away, one of the minister’s friends turned to him and said with some exasperation, “Can’t you do anything about this??”  He couldn’t, of course.  And he quickly retorted with what’s become one of my favorite pastor lines: “Sorry, I’m in sales, not management.”  I use it whenever I can! 

The fact is, preachers don’t have access to all the answers.  They don’t have an exclusive hotline to God.  Which is why long ago, when God apparently wasn’t in the habit of speaking much, when God decided to speak, he chose to speak to a young boy who had no idea what was going on.  Not the priest.  Not the preacher.  Never discount the fact that you are just as able – and sometimes more able – to be the recipient of God’s message in your life; calling you to do something extraordinary.  Never discount that.

On the contrary, expect God to speak to you!  Expect it!  As hard as that often can be.  It’s tough knowing when the voice you’re hearing is coming from God, isn’t it?  It’s hard knowing for sure if that “nudge” you feel inside is God nudging you, or something else.  We have something in common with Samuel, my friends; we’re just not accustomed to God’s voice.  We don’t really have any experience with it. The word of the Lord is rare in these days, visions are not widespread.

You and live in a culture where anything outside the norm can be rationalized away.  We’ve accepted the fact, even become comfortable with the notion, that God doesn’t break into our ordinary world anymore.  We don’t have waters part right in front of us.  We’ve never seen thousands of people fed with a few pieces of bread and fish.  And we’ve certainly never witnessed a dead man walking out of his tomb one Sunday morning.  We live in a world where the knee-jerk reaction to anything outside the ordinary, anything miraculous or wonderful, sounds an awful lot like Eli: You’re dreaming.  You’re hearing voices in your head. Don’t pay any attention to them.  Go back to bed.  Go back to sleep.  You’re just dreaming. 

And it’s only when we realize who is speaking to us that we are able to reorient ourselves to respond with that wonderful act of faith: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!

This past week at our Bob Chilton Bible study, we were talking about this passage, talking about Samuel and Eli, talking about a God who speaks and how we struggle to listen.  One of our members, a recent transplant of the United Church of Christ, shared a quote by the late Gracie Allen, wife of comedian George Burns, that had become that denomination’s motto:

Never place a period where God has put a comma.
God is still speaking.

She explained that the church had little comma buttons and little comma lapel pins; and that the comma was part of their logo on their website and on t-shirts and coffee mugs.  A simple comma.

God hasn’t stopped speaking!  What do you think this world would look like if we actually lived like our God still speaks to us; if we made a concentrated effort to keep listening?  What would it look like, in this age of absent visions and misheard words?  What do you think God is saying to us right now about our culture that is driven by fear?  If we really listened, what do you think we’d hear God say about the billions here in our town and around the world who can’t remember the last time they had a decent meal?  What does God have to say to us about those people who suffer from some form of domestic violence in our country every nine seconds?  Or those who die of treatable diseases, like AIDS, every eleven seconds?  What wonderful, challenging things would God say to us, if we really listened? 

Not a period, Samuel.  Not a period, people of God.  A comma.  God is still speaking.  We should keep listening. Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

PUTTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER

Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Steve Lindsley
January 8, 2012

He sits at the cardboard table in the living room, and attention is fully focused on the 1000 puzzle pieces spread out before him.  Amazing little jagged cardboard cuts, no two alike, with nooks and crannies that fit together into one large masterpiece.  He glances over at the picture on the cover – a beautiful vista from the Grand Canyon.  How all of these pieces will come together to look like that, he has no idea.  But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

He has a routine he follows every time.  First, he gets all the end pieces together to form the frame.  Now comes the hard part – filling it in.  He manages to get a few pieces together into a small mass, but is stumped with one spot. He canvasses the entire table, once, twice, but no luck.  He looks back in the box – its empty.  He casts an accusatory glare at the dog at his feet, whose been known to mistake puzzle pieces for doggie treats from time to time; but there is no guilt on his face. 
Perseverance pays off eventually, and after a fourth look-over he finds the missing piece.  The section comes together beautifully, as does the rest of the puzzle.  And before nightfall he stands back to gaze upon his masterpiece – 1000 individual pieces, all formed together in their unique places to create the beautiful mountain scene. 

My father loves puzzles.  I, however, never inherited his stellar patience.  I’ve never asked him why he took to puzzles the way that he did – but if I had to guess, I’d say it was because there’s great satisfaction in creating, piece by piece, bit by bit, the final completed picture.  Each piece has one and only one place it can go.  And in order for the picture to be complete, every one of those 100, or 500, or 1000, or even 2000 puzzle pieces needs to be in their proper place.  Until that happens, the picture isn’t what it’s meant to be.

Now I don’t know if the apostle Paul was a puzzle guy.  I mean, it wasn’t like the man had a bunch of free time on his hands – persecuting Christians as Saul, then trying to build them up following his conversion.  But it seems to me that Paul is doing a little bit of “puzzling” in his letter to the church in Ephesus.  It’s a congregation that Paul himself had established.  Like most Christian communities in the early days of the church – and, in many ways, like Christians today – these churches struggled with living out the gospel message in their daily lives.  They knew what they needed to do and not do – but putting it all together, with each piece in its proper place, was much easier said than done.

So Paul takes on the role of the Puzzle master, laying each individual piece out on the table before them:

• Put away falsehood and speak the truth
• Do not let the sun go down on your anger
• Do not make room for the devil – I like the way the Good News Bible puts it: Don’t give the devil a chance!
• Thieves must give up stealing
• Let no evil talk come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building up
• Put away bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander; and be kind and tenderhearted to one another
• Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you

And then Paul does something kind of neat in the first verse of chapter five – he reveals to them what the finished picture will look like when all the puzzle pieces are put together.  It’s kind of like laying all the pieces out on the table and then looking on the cover of the box to see what you’re shooting for, you know?  For Paul and those early Christians, the end result is that the people in that church be imitators of God.  That’s the phrase he uses – imitators of God: that their very actions, thoughts, motives, feelings and labors reflect back to the One who created them and loves them still. 

You got to commend Paul for what he does here, don’t you? When the Ephesians – and us, for that matter – speak the truth, when we don’t give the Devil a chance, when we refrain from stealing or speaking evil or getting bitter or angry; when we build up others with our words or live out tenderheartedness; and surely when we forgive, it’s then when the pieces of the puzzle fall into their place and the beautiful picture is born – a community of people, bound together by Christ, imitating their God.

So – we’ve got the pieces and we’ve got the final picture.  But is our work done?  Are our labors as followers of Christ complete?  Far from it!  Far from it.

A preschool teacher tells the story of a little boy in her class one day.  Her group was out on the playground, enjoying a beautiful spring morning, when one of the children in her class came running up in tears – it seems that a boy in the group had hit her in a tussle over who got the swing next.  The teacher went and pulled the boy aside, told him that hitting was not allowed, and directed him to go and apologize to the girl – which he did.  Everything seemed to be back to normal.

Not two minutes later, that girl came running back, crying, saying the same boy had hit her again.  When the teacher called the boy over, he did not seem to understand her frustration.  She asked if he had hit the girl again; he said very matter of factly, “yes.”  She asked why he did that.  He gave the standard child answer, “I don’t know.”  The teacher reiterated that hitting was wrong – didn’t he remember their previous talk?  To which the boy calmly responded, “Oh, yeah; but see, it’s okay, because I’ll just apologize to her later.”

He didn’t realize it, of course, but that little boy demonstrated the one of the greatest stumbling blocks in the Christian life with those puzzle pieces and the final masterpiece.  The boy knew the piece – apologize when you hit someone.  And he knew something about the finalized picture – in this case, getting along with your friends.  What he didn’t realize was the tie between the two, and that apologies could not be used as an indefinite absolution for hitting.  That was not the point of saying he was sorry.  There was an element of transformation that needed to take place; where he would grow and learn from his experience, adding one more piece to the puzzle.

Our story of faith bears a striking resemblance to that boy’s struggle, don’t you think?  We know the puzzle pieces – the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the things Paul lists here.  We get these pieces from our parents, from church, from school.  At the same time, we know something about the end result of all of this – that final picture where we are imitators of God; where God’s will and ours are one and the same. 

The challenge is putting it all together – and therein lies the heart of living out our Christian calling.  Like the young boy on the playground, we are all in need of transformation – a transformation to help us see that life is more than simply following rules.  That our faith is a living faith; one that led a nation to search for a promised land, one that led women and men to speak God’s word, one that led one man in particular to die so that we might have life. 

That’s the puzzle, if you will, of our Christian faith.  It’s a puzzle we all spend the better part of our lives trying to sort out.  It’s a puzzle that nine of you in particular started working on a few months ago, when your phone rang and the person on the other end asked if you’d consider having your name put in nomination to be a ruling elder of this church.  And on this day, a day that we ordain and install Nancy, Jeff, Beth, Mike, Oren, Tom, Daniel, Catherine and Garrett, we lift you up in prayer as you help us figure out what masterpiece God is working on here at First Presbyterian Church.  And if there’s anything I could tell you as you begin your time of service, tell all of us here, it’s that the masterpiece and the puzzle pieces needed to put it together can often surprise us beyond measure.

Kathleen Norris is an author and a member of a Presbyterian church in South Dakota.  But that wasn’t always the case.  For a number of years she believed in Jesus but was suspicious of the institution of the church.  And even as she prepared to join the church, she still felt apart from it; still trying to put the puzzle pieces together to form the masterpiece she had in her mind.
Listen to a story she tells us from her book Amazing Grace:

It was January, bitterly cold and windy, on the day that I joined the church; and I found that the sub-zero chill perfectly matched my mood.  As I walked to the church, into the face of that wind, I was thoroughly depressed.  I didn’t feel much like a Christian and wondered if I was making a serious mistake.  I still felt like an outsider in the church and wondered if I always would.  Yet I knew that somehow, in ways I did not yet understand, making this commitment was something I needed to do.
Before the service, the new members gathered with some of the elders.  One was a man I’d never liked much.  I’ll call him Ed.  He always seemed ill-tempered to me, and also a terrible gossip, epitomizing the small mindedness that can make small-town life such a trial.  The minister had asked him to formally greet the new members.  Standing awkwardly before our small group, Ed cleared his throat and mumbled, “I’d like to welcome you to the body of Christ.”

The minister’s mouth dropped open, as did mine – neither of us had ever heard words remotely like this come from Ed’s mouth.  Like distant thunder, the words made me more alert….I was astonished to realize, as that service began, that while I may never like Ed very much, I had just been commanded to love him.  My own small mind had just been jolted, and the world seemed larger, opened in a new way.

“Be imitators of God,” Paul says.  This means we are to copy God’s grace and love and hospitality, even if we’ll never come close to divine perfection, because we never well.  This means welcoming all people into the body of Christ – even the ill-tempered, even the gossiper, even the small-minded.  And it means allowing ourselves to become part of a body that is made up of imperfect components. 

Which is why, as we begin another calendar year together, as we ordain and install our new ruling elders, I want to encourage us to take up the hobby of putting puzzles together.  But not necessarily the cardboard pieces and boxes variety.  Let’s work together on the puzzle God has given our church; working toward the masterpiece God has in store.  Believe me, it’s a lot prettier than the Grand Canyon.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.