The Mayberry Preacher

SIGNS AND WONDERS: SAVING THE BEST TILL NOW

John 2: 1-12
Steve Lindsley
February 26, 2012

 

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It may have happened.  It may not have happened.  But it’s kind of neat to think that it did.  Years after Jesus’ death, years after his resurrection and the beginnings of the church, there is a family reunion that takes place in Jesus’ childhood home.  He’s not there, of course, but he’s there in spirit with his brothers and his mother, who get together, as most families do, far too infrequently.  And it’s true, by the way; it’s true that Jesus did have brothers, as they’re mentioned a number of times in the New Testament, including what we read today.

Maybe it was the annual Passover celebration that brought them back home, or maybe some other family tradition, or maybe they just wanted to spend some time with their Mom.  Mary, of course, would be elated at to have them there; and she would’ve tidied up the house and fixed their favorite meal for them, as mothers do when their grown kids come home..

And so there they all would be, with one chair noticeably unoccupied; and they would be there eating and drinking and laughing.  And they would tell stories, all night long.  Oh, those family stories!  How many times would they begin a sentence with “Do you remember when….?”  How many times would they reminisce, “How about that time….?”  Oh, the stories that would be told and relived and re-membered all over again.

And inevitably, at some point, someone would bring up that time at the wedding in Cana, when the wine ran out.

Today, on this first Sunday of Lent, we begin a journey.  Our 40 days in the wilderness, as it were.  Forty days to prepare ourselves for that glorious Easter morning when we celebrate the risen Lord and the eternal joy that is new life.

But there is a reason we are not there yet.  We have to take a trip to get there.  And as with many things of faith, the trip is just as important as our final destination.  And that is why, during this Lenten season, we will journey together with the Gospel of John – and specifically, the seven miracles around which the writer of John tell the story of Jesus.  Except John doesn’t call these miracles “miracles.”  He has a specific name for them: he calls them “signs” – signs not simply of Jesus’ power over the natural order, but signs of the glory of God that rested in him.  Seven signs that we’ll look at on this Lenten journey:

-    Turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana
-    Healing a centurion’s son and a crippled man
-    Feeding the 5000
-    Walking on water
-    Healing a blind man
-    Raising Lazarus from the dead
-    And, of course, his own resurrection

For John, the significance of these miracles, these signs, does not rest solely in the act of the miracle itself, but in that to which the miracle points.  Like mileage posts that tell you as you drive along, that you’re 50, 35, 25, 15, 5 miles to your destination, miracles in the gospel of John are signs that point us closer and closer to who Jesus is.

And so we begin this journey with John’s first sign – which takes place, of all things, at a wedding party.  Kind of an odd place to begin a ministry, isn’t it? I mean, Matthew’s Jesus begins things a little more conventionally, behind the proverbial pulpit preaching a sermon on the mount.  Luke’s Jesus launches into things with a wilderness temptation for forty days.  But John – John’s Jesus starts things off at a raucous, fun-loving wedding party.  And not just any wedding party, mind you, but a wedding party where the wine runs out.

Can there be anything more embarrassing, more mortifying than hosting the biggest party of the year, a true community event like a first-century Jewish wedding, and not having enough refreshments?  You can almost hear Jesus’ brothers and Mary, gathered around that kitchen table at our imaginary family reunion, expressing as much.  They’d recall how weddings back in the day were huge occasions, where the celebration afterwards would literally go on for days.  No two or three hour reception here, folks – we’re talking about a whole week.  Now that’s a party, people!  So it had to have been the wedding faux pas to end all wedding faux pas: to run out of wine right in the middle of the party.  And yet that’s exactly what happened at this wedding that Jesus and his brothers and mother attended all those years ago.  An epic wedding party fail.

And Jesus’ family would recall, with much humor, how Mom had shared this bit of news with Jesus.  Now she would claim in her defense that she was only passing along information, nothing more.  Right, they all would say.  They knew better than that.  Moms are always up to something!  There’d be a few chuckles as they remembered how Jesus responded, slightly perturbed by his mother’s passive prodding.  Something like the way The Message translation puts it: Jesus saying to her, Don’t push me.

Didn’t matter much what he thought, though, did it!  Jesus wound up doing what he mother wanted anyway, because that’s what good sons do.  Six huge purification jars, filled to the brim with water, suddenly transformed into nearly 180 gallons of wine!  Can you imagine that much wine!  Mary and Jesus’ brothers, shaking their heads in amazement, as they always did when they remembered that wedding, as they always did when they remembered anything about Jesus.

And so there it is: the first sign of the gospel of John, turning water into wine.  And so this is for us a sign of……well, of what?  Of the importance of wine to a wedding party?  Of Jesus’ missed career opportunity in the viticultural industry?  Of his personal emphasis on the fifth commandment to “honor thy father and mother?’  What was this first sign about?  Was it a sign of Jesus “wowing the crowds with a nifty parlor trick;” at a wedding nonetheless, a more “chic” entrance into his three-year mission than a stuffy sermon on a mountain or forty days in the wilderness?

What are miracles about, really?  Maybe that’s the question we ought to be asking ourselves first.  What are miracles about?  I remember a seminary professor, asking that very question in class one day.  We were studying John’s gospel, so it was very much on our minds.  And I remember, as we were having this conversation, how it was springtime outside our classroom window that day, the very beginning, where the tips of the dogwood trees that lined our campus were just starting to show their brilliant white.  And I remember how one of our students, he and his wife, had just welcomed their first child into the world the week before; our classmate’s eyes at the time showing that beautiful worn-down glow of the elated exhaustion of a new parent.

And we knew – we knew that spring happens every April, we knew that babies are born every day.  But that didn’t make either of those things any less of a miracle.  Which is partly why, I believe, our class was able to understand that miracles, at their core, are about seeing God-in-action around us, especially in ways that aren’t so out of the ordinary.

Because let’s face it – having lots of wine at a wedding in Jesus’ time was not out of the ordinary.  As miraculous as that whole water-into-wine thing was, I’m not sure that’s the miracle John wants us to focus on here.  Could it be that the real miracle, the one deserving of our attention on this first Sunday of Lent, was not just that they had more wine, but how good that new wine was?

See, there’s this wonderful little exchange that takes place at the end of our story!  The headwaiter of the wedding, the one whose job it is to see that all the plans, all the preparations go off without a hitch, he comes and gets a taste of the new wine, not knowing where it came from, not knowing how it got there; and after he tastes it he goes and finds the bridegroom, the guy who paid for everything.  And he says to him:

Everybody I know begins with their finest wines,
And after the guests have had their fill brings in the cheap stuff.
But you’ve saved the best till now!

God's saved the best till now!  That’s not how we typically think of things, is it?  We like to remember how the best days were sometime in the past, already gone by, all nostalgic.  What’s that expression we like to use: “Oh, those good old days!”  Or maybe the best hasn’t happened yet; maybe it’s in the future, at the consummation and the second coming, in the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.  And so we say, “the best days are yet to come!”

But no, this miracle, this sign in the second chapter of John tells us: No.  The best isn’t in our past, and the best isn’t in days to come.  The best is now.  Right now.

Tell me something, First Presbyterian – what kind of God do we worship who saves the best wine until now?  What kind of God do we journey with this Lenten season, journey with our whole lives long, who serves goodness after goodness, mercy after mercy; and just when we think our jars have run out, God fills them with a goodness and a mercy that’s even better than what was in them before?

I’ll tell you what kind of a God that is – it’s a God of miracles and a God of signs; a God who shows God’s presence not by wowing us with miraculous feats and wonders, but simply by filling our jars with the better stuff.  That’s what our God does!  God keeps filling our jars with new wine that’s even better than before. 

God keeps filling our jars, even when those jars get tired and run down, even when they’re a little broken or a little chipped.  You know those times when you feel like you’re running on empty, when you’ve given it all you can, when the goodness of God that used to be in you has been all used up?  My friends, that is the very moment when God fills you with something that is even better than before.

Today, as we begin our journey, we gather before this table to be filled with God’s goodness.  And while we may not think of communion as a wedding party, it is very much a celebration.  Here at this table, our cup is filled with new wine.  Here at this table, our plate serves up the bread of life.  Here at this table, you and I have a little family reunion of our own – where we, too, remember all that Jesus did, for us, for the world, and collectively shake our heads in amazement and gratitude.

Because as we receive God’s gifts at the table today, we realize that we are like those servants in the wedding story – the servants who were the only ones who truly recognized what Jesus did that day. We, too, have witnessed the miracle, the “sign” of all Jesus has done – not just turning water into wine, but an abundance of some of the best wine around.

So let us share this meal with the world – a world whose jars are running empty; always on empty  Let us fill them with the goodness of God – a goodness that keeps getting better and better and better.  That’s a story that deserves to be remembered over and over again.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

SOLE POWER

Joshua 3: 7-17; Matthew 14: 22-33
Steve Lindsley
February 19, 2012
 
If I were to ask you to recall the incident in the Bible when the waters parted and allowed God’s people to go from one side to the other, you’d probably describe a Charlton Heston-like Moses, standing on a rock cleft looking out over the massive Red Sea, holding his arms up high as the Israelites made their way to the other side and to their freedom.  And you’d be right, of course, because that’s what we find in Exodus chapter 14.  Well, not the Charlton Heston part, but you know what I mean.

The thing that may be news to most of us is that this is not the only water-parting story in the Bible.  There’s another one that comes later, in the book of Joshua.  Now granted, it doesn’t get near the press time as the first one.  Nor is it as glamorous, or Hollywood-worthy.  This other water-parting story takes place not at the beginning of the Israelites’ 40-year journey in the wilderness, but at the very end of it; right as they were preparing to set foot in the land God has promised them so many years before.  In fact, that promised land was just on the other side of the body of water that stood between them and their destiny.  Just a few steps away from their new home.

It was the Jordan River that God’s people had to cross this time – not at all like the vast Red Sea a generation before.  This was just a river bed, but still deep enough to be a problem for carts and livestock and the like.  They couldn’t cross in the open water.  They had to do something else.

But they weren’t going to be able to stand on a rock high above the waters and observe God’s miracle from a distance.  No, this time, they were going to be a bit more invested in things.  They were going to get their feet wet!  Twelve priests, one from each of the tribes of Israel, wading into the middle of the Jordan River.  Imagine the visual here!  Twelve esteemed and revered grown men, decked to the hilt in their minister regalia, standing waist-deep in river water!  And they’re carrying with them, scripture says, the Ark of the Covenant. This was a large ornate box containing the two tablets of the Ten Commandments that Moses received decades before from God on Mount Sinai. 

And at first glance it seems it’s this Ark that’s the focus here; the “trigger,” if you will, that sends the waters receding to the sides.  Which makes sense – this revered, holy artifact that was the closest thing God’s people had to a physical sign of God’s presence among them.  Surely that’s what caused the waters to do what they did, right?

But hold on a minute – something’s amiss here.  Something is trying to show us that the Ark, as important as it was to the Hebrew faith, was not really the center of attention in this second water-parting story.  Instead, the passage that Nelson read to us just a few minutes ago mentions something very specific that touches the waters and sets in motion their parting:

When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth,
when the soles of their feet
rest in the waters of the Jordan,
the waters of the Jordan flowing from above
shall be cut off;
they shall stand in a single heap.

Now I could be off-base here – I’ve certainly been known to get stuck in the details and miss the big picture – but it just seems odd that this passage would get so specific about the soles of the priests’ feet.  What’s that all about?  Is it just good descriptive writing?  I don’t know.  I mean, it could suggest an immediacy about things; about God once again acting decisively in the lives of God’s people. It’s not just at some random point when they’re wading in the water, but right at that instant in the middle of the Jordan – right when skin touches riverbed, when the very first part of the foot that can makes contact.  When the soles of the feet of the priests rest in the Jordan, the waters shall stand in a single heap.

When I got back into regular running a little over a year ago, I knew the first thing I needed to do was buy some new running shoes.  The ones I had were too old and worn out.  So I found my way to a store in Winston-Salem that some friends hooked me up with; and this store did more than just set me up with the hottest name brand.  They measured my feet and actually watched me walk and run a few paces outside in the parking lot, just to make sure I got the right shoes for my particular stride.   They also made sure I got the right insoles to go in the new running shoes.  This, I was told, was important because not every foot is shaped the same; not every foot has the same contour and frame.  And the right insole would help stabilize my gait and keep certain parts of my leg – namely, my knees – from bearing too much of the brunt of the force of hitting the pavement over and over again.

Now I’ll be honest with you – I was kind of skeptical about the insoles, wondering if this was some sales ploy to add to an already expensive bill that day.  But I had running friends of mine later confirm to me their importance.  One put it quite bluntly when she said that, after all, when you’re running, the soles of your feet are the very first thing to hit the ground.

Soles are important because they’re the first thing to hit the ground.  Or, in this case, the water.  And how we take that first step into the turbulent waters of our lives can make all the difference, can’t it?  I mean, just ask the disciple Peter.  Peter had the guts to step out of the boat, out of solid footing in the midst of a chaotic storm, and begin walking to Jesus in the waves.  And you have to figure that of all the steps he took before he started sinking, that very first step was the hardest, don’t you think?  That instant when the sole of his foot made contact with the water, and then shifting his body weight onto that foot.  Out of all the steps those feet had taken in their life, that first step out of the boat surely must have been the hardest.

Let me ask you this: in what way is your walk of faith like those priests heading off with that Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan River?  In what way is your walk of faith like Peter’s first step out of that boat?  In what way is that first step the hardest one for you to take, as you maneuver in your own life through the sometimes chaotic waters around you?  For some, just walking through the doors of a church – any church – is a hard first step, especially if in their past the church was a place of judgment and hypocrisy.  For some, making the move out of the only home they’ve ever known into a place like Golden Living or Ridgecrest is a hard first step, because such a move means they’re give up some of their independence.  Remember what it was like signing that huge stack of mortgage papers at the attorney’s office for the very first time?  Buying your home can be a hard first step!  And what about driving your child to the college campus for that first fall semester?  What about being that college student and watching your parents drive away?

That very first step out of the boat, out into the water, is always the hardest.  That instant when the soles of our feet, metaphorically-speaking, come into contact with a surface that is strange and foreign, that does not feel familiar, that doesn’t feel like it’s going to give us the support and assurance we’ve always felt.  That first step into the water is always the hardest one.

But as those priests and Israelites discovered alongside the Jordan River, as Peter himself discovered when he got out of the boat, that first step is also where God does God’s greatest work in and through us.  I was reading this past week about a guy who went rock climbing with some friends in Colorado.  We’ll call him Frank.  Frank was heading up a rather large rock face on the side of a mountain and doing a pretty good job.  But at one point, he found himself suspended halfway up a cliff with no clear-cut path forward.  There just weren’t any decent hand-holds or toe-holds in his sight.  He kind of hung there motionless for longer than usual.  His friends below, perhaps sensing his anxiety, started shouting encouragement.  Frank could feel his heart pound, his breathing tighten, and his arms and legs start to feel shaky on the precarious creases he was balancing on.  Looking up, all he could see was a smooth rock face that ran up to the top.  Nothing to grab hold of; nowhere to go.  More and more, Frank began to fear that fear that rock-climbers dread – that he had gone as far as he could and was hopelessly stuck.

It would’ve been easy for Frank to be paralyzed right there on that rock face, high above the ground.  It would’ve been easy for Frank to have allowed his fear and uncertainly to get the best of him.  But suppressing his anxieties for the moment, Frank looked around and realized that the only option he had was to move sideways.  In a sense this went against the rock-climber mentality, because it wouldn’t get him any closer to the top and expend precious energy in the process.  But it was movement of some sort; better than just clinging there to the rock.  So Frank found another toe-hold to dig his foot into, and he began to inch his way to the left, his fingers barely keeping a grip on the ledge.

And that was the point – after that first step – when Frank was able to see, around the corner, something he hadn’t seen before – another hand-hold.  Reaching for it, he managed to boost himself up.  And there he saw another hand-hold, and another, and another, all the way to the very top of the cliff.  Something that was totally out of his view just seconds ago; now a clear path to his destination.  Something he never would’ve seen had he not changed his position, changed his perspective; moving sideways for just a second in order to move forwards. (http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/quote-of-the-month/mlk-first-step-in-faith, visited on 2.12.2012)

I don’t know if the quote came from one of his sermons or his letters or essays, but whatever it was, the great Martin Luther King Jr. hit the nail on the head when he said this:

Faith is taking the first step
even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

The apostle Peter got out of that boat and took a step into the waters, even though this was not something human beings typically did.  He had no plan, no agenda; he didn’t know how he was going to do it.  All he knew is that he wanted to get to Jesus.  The twelve priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the waters of the Jordan River, even though they got soaking wet, even though it seemed like a silly thing to do.  They had no plan, no agenda.  All they knew is that the land God has promised them for hundreds of years was on the other side, and they all wanted to get there.

Whether you and I are trying to get to Jesus, whether you and I are trying to get to the Promised Land, it’s inevitable: at some point we have to take that first step.  A first step into the unknown, where all of our wonderful plans and agendas become irrelevant and obsolete.  It takes courage, it takes faith.  It takes something deep inside us that, ironically, doesn’t come from us, but comes from the One who brings us there.

And you know what we should call that?  We should call it “sole power.”  S-O-L-E, not the other kind of soul, even though there’s certainly a lot of S-O-U-L in stepping out into the watery chaos of life.  “Sole power” – because that first step of faith is so important, so critical, and often the most difficult one.  And yet, in that very moment when the bottoms of our feet make contact with the surface – that, my friends, is when God parts waters and reaches out to us. 

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.  May God grant you and me the kind of “sole power” to get us from where we are to the Promised Land that awaits.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

LIFE UNDER THE BROOM TREE

1 Kings 19:1-9a
Steve Lindsley
February 12, 2012

Other than Valentine’s Day – which, if I need to remind you, is this coming Tuesday – other than Valentine’s Day, I am not a fan of the month of February.  With all apologies to those who have birthdays or anniversaries, February has always seemed to me like this month that’s stuck in there only because we can’t go straight from January to March.  It’s always cold in February – this weekend being the perfect example.  And we’re left pining for sunny, warm summer days spent around the swimming pool or soaking in the sand and surf at the beach.

Of course, it’s inevitable that once those dog days of summer get here, and temperatures soar into the three digits, February starts looking pretty good!  We forget how the other extreme isn’t much better.  And it’s that “other extreme” I think of when I read today’s scripture.  The wilderness of the desert; the blazing and unforgiving sun, no shelter or shade in sight. 

Unless you consider a broom tree shade, and that’s be stretching it.  Really stretching it.  The broom tree is a large shrub that only grows in the desert.  There’s a picture of one on the cover of the bulletin this morning.  Suffice to say it’s nothing you’d want in your garden at home.  It’s made up of coarse, rough branches that reach as high as ten feet.  It’s not very attractive; all scraggly and unkempt.  And it certainly isn’t as shady as a tall oak or maple tree.

And yet that’s precisely where he was, underneath that broom tree.  For Elijah, the great prophet of God, that tree was all he had.  And to be quite honest, it was a very strange place to find him, given recent events. 

Just days before, Elijah found himself literally on top of the world at Mount Carmel.  For years he had duked it out with the Canaanite queen Jezebel as to whose God was more powerful.  So Elijah proposed a contest– one that would pit him against the prophets of Baal and Jezebel.  The rules were simple – each would be given an altar and instructed to pray, dance, do whatever to invoke their god to light that altar with fire.  The one whose altar lit would win the contest and prove their God to more powerful and worthy of devotion. 

You know the story.  The prophets of Baal danced for hours around their altar, yelling and chanting at the top of their lungs.  But their altar remained unlit.  When it was Elijah’s turn, he doused his altar with water and dug a deep moat around it, also filled with water.  Then he prayed a simple prayer and instantly the altar burst into flames.  It was a smack-down!

Now you’d think this would earn Elijah some respect; that the people would reclaim their devotion to Yahweh and Jezebel’s influence would diminish to nothing.  You would think.  Instead, Jezebel, more incensed than ever, issues a death sentence on the prophet’s head.  And Elijah is forced to flee to Judah, running for his very life.  And when he gets there, it is not within the comforts of the great palace where we find this victorious prophet.  It is not in the presence of adoring Israelites who have unanimously renewed their commitment to God.

No, we find Elijah, of all places, in the middle of a desolate and unforgiving desert, huddled underneath a broom tree.  Scared, frightened, disillusioned, depressed.  Elijah was totally vulnerable and exposed – exposed to the murderous whims of a madwoman, exposed to the heartbreaking “let-down” that always follows a pointless victory.  And perhaps most poignantly, as if to add insult to injury, exposed to the harsh elements of the desert – the wind, sun, heat and sand – because the broom tree in which he found himself under offered no protection from those sorts of things.  None.  That broom tree was more than a sorry excuse for shelter.  It was a metaphor for the depths of his misery.  Take me now, he calls out to God through chapped lips and parched throat.  I’ve had enough.  Just take me now.

You know, if we just brush over this image here, if we keep reading without taking pause, we really miss what I think is a key element of these first nine verses – and that is the utter humanity of the man.  This is a broken man here.  You and I love to take our Biblical characters and imagine them as larger-than-life figures, putting Elijah and others on a pedestal, elevating them to someone that is something more than you and me.  And while it’s true that Elijah did some pretty powerful things in his time, here he now is – huddled in the fetal position under a broom tree, of all things, at the lowest point of his life.

And whenever this sort of thing happens in the Bible, whenever these larger-than-life figures are cast into the depths of the valley, it’s almost always a sign from the one telling us the story – the writer – that they want us to do more than just observe this poor soul from a distance.  They want us to see ourselves in that person, in their plight, in their suffering.  They want us to identify with them.

And so I wonder this morning, how many of you can identify with what Elijah is going through here?  In what ways have you hit rock bottom and cried out, I’ve had enough!  In what ways can you relate to that despondency and helplessness when life deals you one dose too many of bad luck, when the things you do don’t seems to make any lasting difference, when you just can’t seem to catch a break.  Like Elijah, we know the roller-coaster nature of those intoxicating highs and the hard fall that follows when the good times don’t last.  It’s a shared experience of our very humanity.

Here’s a single young woman who puts on a good face in public but can’t deny the fact that, at her core, she’s lonelier than she’d ever admit.  Here’s an elderly couple who seem to take turns as to who’s next in the hospital, which body part needs fixing now; and they know the doctors and nursing staff on a first-name basis.  Here’s a successful businessman who can’t explain why he struggles to get motivated each morning, why he hasn’t been sleeping well, and why little in life makes him happy anymore.  Here’s a long-time church member who continues coming every Sunday but can’t deny the disillusion they feel and the difficulty of trying to justify their long-held beliefs with a world that is constantly changing around them. 

That’s what life is like under the broom tree.  On the mountain, as Elijah discovered, life is good. Everything is according to plan.  There’s a clear line between right and wrong, good and evil; and good always win.  Life on the mountain is the world of the thirty-minute sitcom and the feel-good movie that suggest our problems and difficulties can always be solved and that the “right people” always come out on top.

But things are quite different under the broom tree.  Here, things don’t always go according to plan.  Things are rarely as “black and white” as we might like them to be.  Instead, we’re mired in this unfulfilling “gray” that leaves us confused and unsure.  And there’s this lingering uncertainty when it comes to ourselves and our place in this world, and perhaps even our God.  In fact, as we cower under the useless shelter of the broom tree, we may even wonder where God is. 

So perhaps, perhaps we’d be as surprised as the prophet was when he discovered that God was actually right there with him.  In the form of an angel – an angel who brought him food and water; sustenance for the journey and for life under the broom tree.  God-with-him, under that tree.  This kind of flies in the face of conventional wisdom, doesn’t it?  Because the world tends to view God as residing somewhere “up there;” apart and separate from what goes on “down here.” Salvation is seen as God coming down out of the heavens and kind of yanking us up out of our troubles, out of our broom tree lives, and pulling us to safety.  God is kind of relegated to the role of lifeguard – always watching us, but only really coming to be with us when we need God the most.

But what Elijah discovered that day, in a very dramatic way, is that God does not come from somewhere else to us.  We don’t have to wait for God to whisk us out from underneath the broom tree – because the truth of the matter is that God is right there underneath it with us.  And there’s something terribly profound about a God who is already in the midst of our difficulties; already in the messiness of life, in the brokenness and incompleteness and complexity.  God is with us, very much with us, in our time in the wilderness, when the sun is the hottest and beating down on us.  We don’t have to go searching for God.  God is already right there. 

But that’s not all, is it?  God isn’t just there.  God acts, as well.  God acts and God gives us what we need to make it through.  Nothing fancy or outlandish – just ask Elijah.  No multi-course dinner and large beverage reserves in the comfy confines of a two-story with four bedrooms and two and a half baths.  Just a broom tree, some bread and a little water.  Just what he needed to get by, to take him from one mountain-top experience to the next.   

This, too, isn’t what we always expect from God.  We're conditioned to think that a big and bold God always paints with big and bold strokes.  Waters parting, manna from heaven falling, Jericho walls crumbling, soaking wet altars consumed in a raging file. I mean, given his own experience days before on Mount Carmel, is it any wonder that Elijah might have seen the broom tree as a major letdown?  The bread and water as a little on the lame side? 

I know I’ve told this story before, but bear with me.  Imagine a man and a huge flood that ravages his town.  Everyone’s in a panic, except this man – he sits comfortably on the porch of his house, convinced that whatever happens, God will take care of him.

The water starts to back up in the streets and a large pickup truck sloshes by.  The driver stops and offers a lift.  But the man responds, “No thanks, God will save me!”  The rain continues to fall in buckets, and soon the water rises to the top of his porch.  A neighbor paddles by in a boat and pleads with him to come.  But the man is adamant.  “Everything’s okay – God will save me!” 

The storm gets worse, and soon the waters cover the entire house with only the peak of the roof visible.  And there the man sits.  Suddenly a FEMA helicopter appears overhead and drops down a rope ladder.  Through the loudspeaker the pilot cries out, “Sir, you must come with us.  If you don’t, you will die!” But the man just waves and smiles, “I don’t need your helicopter; I don’t need your ladder.  I’ll be fine because God will save me!”

The waters keep rising, and rising, and rising; and sadly the man drowns.  And so it is a very perplexed soul who walks through the gates of heaven that same day.  There is only one question on his mind as he meets the Almighty: why in the world did God let him die?  Why didn’t God help him?  To which God replies, “What are you talking about? “I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter – what more did you want?!”

You and I expect God to do big things.  And that is a reasonable expectation, because God certainly can and God certainly does.  But sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest difference.  There's a certain "turning point" that takes place in our walk of faith where we begin to see not God’s absence but God's presence.  Not that God does so little, but that God does just enough.

And that's life under the broom tree.  It is, as members of our Bob Chilton Bible study this past week surmised, about God being with us.  About gratitude and grace.  About focusing not on what God isn’t providing, but what God is.  About getting over ourselves.

It’s about a scraggly overgrown bush in the hot harsh desert sun, and some bread and some water, when we are at our lowest, when we feel God is far away, when we don’t think it’s enough – and suddenly realizing that God is there, has always been there, and always will be there.  And that is all we need.  It’s all we’ll ever need.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

OPEN THE DOOR, SOMEONE KEEPS KNOCKING!

Revelation 3: 14-22
Steve Lindsley
February 5, 2012

The sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Lexington, NC has lots of the same things that our sanctuary does – pews, windows, a pulpit, an organ.  But at the same time, it’s very different from ours.  Reflecting the typical mid-20th century sanctuary style in which it was built, it’s shaped like a large rectangle set on its skinny end, with a center aisle running down the middle.  At the front there’s a pulpit on the right and a lectern – a “mini-pulpit,” as some call it – on the left. The choir sits behind each, and the communion table is dead center at the very back.

Now there’s a main entrance to the sanctuary, off the street and the church parking lot that leads into the narthex. But the door that gets the greatest use on Sunday mornings is one at the right front of the sanctuary, not far away from the pulpit.  This one leads out to the main hallway, the church offices, the Educational wing, and the Fellowship Hall.  So, naturally, this is the door that most people enter through before worship as they come from Sunday school classes and such.

Over time, all that use started to take a toll.  After years and years of opening and closing, the latch inside the door had weakened to point where it wouldn’t always stay closed.  It would open randomly, day and night, making a slight “clicking” sound as it did.  You can imagine the odd and humorous scene this created when it happened during the worship life of the church!

It’s Pentecost Sunday, and during the pinnacle of the minister’s sermon on the power of the Holy Spirit as it blew into that room where the disciples were gathered, the side door of the sanctuary opens.  The Holy Spirit has entered!  It’s a funeral service, and in the middle of a homily which went on and on about the deceased – a very humble and unassuming man who would’ve never wanted any of that – the side door opens.  Mr. Brown must’ve come back to put an end to the rambling!  It’s the Christmas pageant, and as the angel Gabriel is sharing the good news with Mary, the door opens. And everyone wonders: did a real angel just grace them with its presence?

I had forgotten all about that door, until last August, when I was back at the church to participate in the ordination service of a good friend.  We were laying hands on Sydne, and deep into the prayer of ordination – you guessed it – that door opened! 

At the reception afterwards, I asked one of my former church members – Lexington’s version of our Mike Branch, actually – I asked him why the door had never been fixed.  He told me that they tried many years before to fix it, but the door handle and lock unit were no longer in production, and there was no good way to put a new one on there without destroying the door.  So they just left it as it was.  And maybe that’s all for the best, you know? That self-opening door had become part of the church’s lore, their collective story.  Besides, doors were meant to be opened! 

If only the church in our scripture reading would’ve felt the same.  You know, it’s always a bit of a challenge to read anything out of Revelation, because there’s all this deep symbolism and metaphor going on.  But in the second and third chapters we are greeted with this vision that John of Patmos experiences – a vision of letters, or prophetic messages if you will, shared with seven churches in the Mediterranean.  It’s almost like they’re getting graded for their work in ministry.  Some of the grades were high, reflecting a job well done.  Others were lower grades for things they’d done wrong, or left undone.

The poorest rating is reserved for the last of these churches – the one in the wealthy Asia Minor city of Laodicea.  And it’s interesting – because it’s not their affluence that’s the problem.  It’s not that they’re doing anything horrible or wrong.  The reason this church receives a message of condemnation is because they were “lukewarm.”  Not cold or hot, as the scripture says, but just lukewarm.  In fact, the one speaking here says they really wish they were either cold or hot instead.  Because being lukewarm is like ending a soccer game or hockey match in a tie.  It’s almost worse than a loss – it is the absence of any definitiveness.

That church in Laodicea was lukewarm.  Stale.  Stagnant.  They weren’t on either side of the proverbial fence; they were putting on a clinic on how to straddle that thing.  When it came to being a witness of Christ to the world, they weren’t doing a stellar job, nor were they doing a terrible job.  They were doing something worse – they just didn’t seem to care.

Now there are many things that can bring a church down.  A pastor or church leader can have some huge scandal revealed.  Dissention and disunity can wedge itself in and tear a church apart.  A congregation can be confused or unclear as to what its mission and vision, its purpose in the world, is.  Members can treat the church and staff with a “country-club” mentality, where the church is viewed as nothing more than a provider of goods and services.  All of those can spell trouble for a church.

But it is hard for me to imagine anything more devastating to a church than being lukewarm.  Apathy – from the minister, from the staff, from the members – apathy can flat-out suck the life out of a church.  I was trying to find some powerful, insightful quote on this when I googled the words “church” and “apathy” this past week.  Who would’ve thought I’d find a website for “The Church Of Apathy!”  I found “Reverend Bob’s” message on the home page quite insightful:     

The Church of Apathy won't help you do anything. We’re not trying to help you become more focused, motivated or confident.  We’re not qualified to do so, and furthermore, we couldn't care less. If you're deluded enough to think your life could be made meaningful if only you found the right church, that’s fine; but please understand, this isn’t that church. Be sure to bookmark this site, so you can return again and again. Millions of visitors begin their day by spending 15-30 minutes here and report that it helps them resign themselves to the pointless drudgery the remaining twenty-three and a half hours is certain to bring. (from www.chuurchofapathy.com)

Inspiring.  I’m not entirely sure if this is a joke or not, but I wonder if this is what that church in Laodicea looked like, had they had websites back then. Because make no mistake, that church was an apathetic, lukewarm bunch – and there was perhaps no greater evidence of this than what we find in verse 20, where Jesus is standing at the door knocking, but they refused to answer the door.  Jesus is right outside, and they weren’t letting him in.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those persons who has a hard time not opening a door when someone’s knocking on it.  When the doorbell rings, I’ve got to answer it.  When the phone rings, I have to pick it up.  I can’t just ignore an email in my inbox, a Facebook message or text. 

And yet here is Jesus, knocking at this church’s door, trying to get in.  He’s knocking and knocking and knocking, and no one is answering.  And the thing is, Jesus isn’t going to open the door himself.  That’s not his style.  Jesus needs the community of faith inside to open the door themselves and welcome him in.  He needs the church to accept his presence in their midst – not because it’s something they have to do, but because it’s something they choose to do.  But no one in this church is letting Jesus in.  No one.  Because they’re lukewarm and apathetic.  Because they just don’t care.
   
Listen!  I’m standing at the door, knocking.  Hello! 

And why does Jesus want to get in?

If you open the door, he says,
I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. 

You know, I find it kind of odd that, of all the things Jesus wants, of all the things Jesus could engage in once that door is opened, I find it odd that he wants to have dinner.  Sit down at a table and have a meal with us.  No healings, no preaching or teaching, no massive miracles.  What’s so special about gathering around the table and eating? 

Could it be that Jesus is being not just a “Door-Knocker” here in the third chapter of Revelation, but a “Party-Bringer” as well?  Check out this thought offered up by one pastor and writer:

There is Jesus! He has in his hand a giant tray of goodies that he's bought at Whole Foods Market, or Fresh Market, or any place you'd like to name -- as long as the food is outrageously expensive and fabulously good. So when he finally appears in your house, having made short work of all the closed doors in your life, make no mistake about what he'll say. He won't say, "What have you got for supper?" or "Why don't  you get us something to drink?" He'll say, "Have some caviar!  Have a quail egg! Have the flourless, double-chocolate cake!" He'll say, "Take, eat!" – not "Fetch!"  He'll say "Have!” – not "Get!"  And he'll say "Enjoy!” – because all his gifts are now yours. (adapted from Robert Farrar Capon, The Foolishness of Preaching: Proclaiming the Gospel Against the Wisdom of the World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 118-119, 125-126)

Don’t you see?  Jesus wasn’t knocking at the door of that church in Laodicea because he wanted to call them out on their apathy. Jesus wasn’t being the pesky neighbor incessantly ringing the doorbell because he couldn’t wait to tell them how lukewarm they were.  Jesus is constantly knocking at our door – persistently, unceasingly, faithfully – because the one thing that Jesus wants most is to sit around the table with each one of us and enjoy a good meal.  To dine with us, party with us, celebrate God’s goodness with us.

And you know why he wants to do that?  Because when we finally open that door and let Jesus in; when we finally sit down at the table Jesus has prepared for us over and over and over again, it becomes very, very hard to continue being lukewarm. It’s near impossible to be apathetic when you’re sitting at the table, eating with Jesus.  When we are met face to face with just how much Jesus loves us, how much he gave up for us, and how magnificent and extraordinary this kingdom he’s coming to build on earth with us really is, we cannot help but care.  And great things happen when the church starts caring about being the church.

Which is why I think we ought to be more like that rickety old church door that would always open on its own, in the middle of worship, reminding the people who it is that’s trying to get inside to be with them.  Or, better yet, the slogan for Welcome Swiss Hotels: Where Doors Open Before You Even Knock.  Jesus is knocking at the door.  Let’s let him in! Thanks be to God.  AMEN.