The Mayberry Preacher

MORE THAN JUST PUTTING WORDS IN YOUR MOUTH

Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Steve Lindsley
May 26, 2013

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The annual shareholder’s meeting is next week, and there’s a knock at your door.  It’s your boss, and she’s asked you to give the opening address at the dinner.  It’s been a difficult year for the company – not bad, but not all that great either.  Nevertheless, as you stand in front of hundreds of shareholders, most of them with huge chunks of stock in your company, you deftly maneuver through the situation; honestly facing up to the year’s struggles but also boldly launching into the potential that lies ahead.  Everyone feels you did a great job and they leave excited about future prospects.

You pick up the phone late one Saturday afternoon and it’s your old college buddy on the other end of the line.  A loved one has died.  Your friend says he needs a favor, and he simply could not think of anyone better to share the eulogy at the funeral – tomorrow.  For most people this would be an insurmountable task, but for you – the one to whom words come easily – it’s not a big deal.  You sit down with pen and paper that evening and, in a half hour or so, have it done.  After the funeral, your friend thanks you for words he says will remain with him for the rest of his life.

Ever longed to do that sort of thing – to know exactly what to say, and how to say it, in any given situation?  At a first glance at our passage today, it appears that’s precisely what God does for young Jeremiah.  God is calling Jeremiah to speak God’s word to the Hebrews and take on the thankless task of being a prophet. 

It’s a familiar scenario in scripture that plays out over and over again.  When God calls, as Jeremiah finds out, it’s really less about asking and more about telling.  In fact, God goes so far as to even say that it’s been in the works all along:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

It’s beautiful poetry and sounds wonderful – unless your name happens to be Jeremiah!  Then it’s downright scary; the idea of God dropping into his life and pretty much telling him his life is going to change in every possible way.  So as Moses, Isaiah, and every other prophet before and after him, Jeremiah resists God’s calling, saying he is too young for the task.

God, of course, had heard it all before – there wasn’t an excuse in the book God didn’t know.  Too young.  Too old.  Don’t know what to say.  Someone else would be better.  Never did any ever cause God to change God’s plans.  And so God reminds Jeremiah of his calling, touching his mouth and saying, Now I have put my words in your mouth.  Now, there’s no excuse – the prophetic words have been deposited in him.  

And while it may seem odd, touching the mouth and instilling words is not a unique thing in prophetic circles.  Take Isaiah, for instance.  Feeling unworthy, Isaiah is touched on the lips by a burning coal that, oddly enough, cleanses him for service.  Moses felt ill-prepared to go before Pharaoh on behalf of the Hebrew slaves and offers God any number of excuses.  God, however, says not to worry; he’ll provide the words that need to be spoken.  It’s amazing, isn’t it, how in both cases, as with pretty much every other prophet, God gives them what they need, whatever “it” was.

Now I am not a prophet.  Sometimes preachers are called to be “prophetic,” but so far God has not asked me to do crazy prophet stuff.  I’m hoping it stays that way.  Even so, if I were Jeremiah, I think I’d feel a sense of comfort in all of this.  Never in God long history had God ever asked someone to be a prophet who was not ready – and never did God fail to give them what they needed to get the job done.  That means something, doesn’t it?

I mean, it hearkens back to that familiar Psalm we all know:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.

That’s some comforting stuff, isn’t it?  God knows us better than we know ourselves.  That’s what the Psalmist is saying.  God not only knows us in the here and now, but also in our past and in our future.  All our thoughts, all our ways, even what we say before we say it.

That’s great, isn’t it!

But you know, it kind of isn’t, too…..

I don’t know.  I just have to wonder if this intense “closeness” can sometimes be a double-edge sword, you know?  Think about it: there is nothing you and I do or think or say that God doesn’t know about.  And not only that, but God’s knowing is past, present and future.  God knows us completely, inside and out.

Be honest – it’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it?

I mean, imagine it: One day, God comes to Jeremiah and says, “Guess what?  You’re gonna be a prophet.  Yeah, I know, you’re not crazy about it.  I knew that’s what you’d think, by the way.  But seriously, I don’t think you get it.  I’ve known you forever, even before you were born.  It’s always been in the cards that being a prophet is who you would be.  There’s really nothing you can do about it.” 

That’s the kind of closeness God talks about in his words to Jeremiah, in the words of the Psalmist.  And the problem is, it flies right in the face of our Western, Puritan mindset that insists we design our own destiny, that we are the masters of our own fate.  The idea that someone else has plans for us, and has had them before we were born – it borders on creepy, doesn’t it?  At the very least it begs the question: did Jeremiah have a choice in how his life would unfold?  Do any of us?

And so inevitably, you and I are forced to wrestle with this age-old dilemma in the form of a doctrine of faith we Presbyterians have been tagged with since the days of the Westminster Confession.  We call it predestination.

Amazing how a lengthy term could feel so much like a four-letter word!  I mean, who really understands predestination?  And be honest – how many times, in the midst of conversation, have we been asked, when our Presbyterian-ness is revealed, what in the world that whole predestination thing is about? 

It reminds me of a story about a man who dies and arrives at the gates of heaven.  There he sees two lines, one labeled "Free Will" and the other "Predestined." Being a good Presbyterian, he gets in the "Predestined" line. When he finally makes his way to the front, an angel greets him.  He checks his clipboard, page after page, and says he doesn’t see his name.  “What brought you to the Predestined line?” the angel asks.  The man replies, "Well, I saw the two signs and chose the Predestined line because I'm Presbyterian."

“Oh, that explains it,” the angel answers.  “You’re in the wrong line.”  The man looks stunned; asks him why that is.  The angel replies, “Simple – you made a choice as to which line you would be in.  If you were really predestined, you would just be here.  So I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the Free Will line.  Back of the line starts over there."

Confused and slightly agitated, the man turns around and heads to the back of the Free Will line.  When he finally arrives at the front of the second line, he’s greeted by yet another angel.  “Hello!” the angel gleefully says, “Welcome to the Free Will line, where it’s all about choice!”  Exasperated, the man cries out, “Choice??  What choice?  That other angel made me come here!"

Now I like this story because it’s funny, but also because it proves a very important point – that predestination, in its original form, is not about the absence of free will.  You can take comfort, fellow Presbyterians, in knowing that you do not hold onto a belief that says you are robots and that everything is fixed.  According to its classic definition, at its very heart, predestination is about God, not us.  We are not in control.  God is.  We are not the masters of our own destiny.  God is.

It’s not hard seeing why this might ruffle some feathers in our 21st century world.  We are people who take great pride in our independence.  We want to be able to do what we want to when we want to do it.  We have our own cars that can take us anywhere we drive them.  We turn on the TV and are greeted by an overwhelming selection of channels, from news networks to home improvement channels and everything in between.  We earn college degrees through the internet, taking classes on our schedule and our timetable.  It’s no wonder, then, that this whole idea of predestination may seem a bit archaic and constraining.   Because, simply put, we don’t like anyone else telling us what to do.

And that’s where I think you and I, as people of faith, are called to stand against the “sign of the times” and be something different; be the unique people of God.  Just as Jeremiah could not divorce himself from the calling God laid on him, we as the people of God cannot plot our own course.  We cannot demand that everything happen according to what we want.  That kind of faith always leads to disaster.

I mean, think what would’ve happened, for instance, if Noah had decided not to bother building the ark.  Or if David had stayed in the fields and not come to receive Samuel’s blessing as king.  Or if Mary had replied to God’s vision by saying, “Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ve got some other names in mind for the baby.”  You and I, we are but small pieces in this huge puzzle of life; and there is so much more to that picture than what you and I typically get to see. 

I wonder what things would be like if we began understanding predestination as theologian Shirley Guthrie understood it, when he talked about being the chosen people of God:  And as a chosen people, Guthrie said,

we are chosen not instead of but for the sake of the world.   We are chosen not to escape from a godless world . . . but to be sent into it and live for it.  We are chosen not so we can congratulate ourselves because we live in the light while everyone else gropes in the darkness, but we are chosen to be a light that shines in their darkness. (Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, Revised ed. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 140)

There is something unique and wonderful about being the chosen people of God.  But there is nothing exclusive about it.  That’s why we don’t have the luxury as Christians of focusing specifically on our own individual needs.  Like the pastor who used to begin all his conversations with prospective members by telling them how glad he was that they were interested in the church, but he needed them to know that the purpose of the church was not to meet their needs.  When the confused stares on their faces had subsided a bit, he told them that the purpose of the church was to meet God’s needs.  And so it is.

Because when we focus on meeting God’s needs instead of our own, beautiful things happen.  Roofs are replaced and courtyards are (well, someday will be) repaired.  Sandwiches are shared on Saturday mornings.  Cleanup buckets are sent to Oklahoma.  Our children have adults who tell them about and show them Jesus.  And all it takes, as Jeremiah found out, is allowing God to work in and through us, according to God’s ways, and not our own.  Because God knows us so well.  Even the words on our mouth, before we speak them.  Take comfort in that, and let God lead the way.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY - RE-MEMBERING A HOPE-FILLED CHURCH

Leviticus 23: 39-43; Jeremiah 29: 11
Steve Lindsley
October 28, 2012

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There’s a movie that came out in 2000 called Memento – a post-modern mystery thriller that centers on a man, Leonard, with anterograde amnesia.  In case you don’t know what that is (as I didn’t until I looked it up), it’s the inability of the brain to form and hold on to new memories.  So you know who you are and a few details of your life, but beyond that, everything’s in chaos.  You literally don’t know from one minute to the next anything about your life.  Can you imagine how fearful that would be?

To counter the effects of his condition, Leonard has created an elaborate Post-It note system in his apartment – it takes up an entire bedroom wall.  It is strewn with hundreds of people’s names, events, reminders, facts – all linked together in an interconnected web, tying together the narrative of his life.  Its sole purpose is to reconnect Leonard with where he’s been, so he knows who he is now, so he knows where he needs to go.

And I have to say, I kind of thought about Leonard’s Post-It note wall when I read this section of A.J.’s book The Year of Living Biblically, and a commandment from God to the ancient Israelites to build something.  Listen:

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The Bible commands, once a year, to build a hut and dwell in it for a week so that we may be reminded of the huts used by the ancient Hebrews when they wandered the desert for forty years. It’s a major biblical holiday called the Feast of Ingathering—or Sukkoth—and is still practiced by religious Jews.

Frankly, the idea of building a large three-dimensional structure gives me a stomachache. I’m no handyman. Put it this way: When I watch Bob the Builder with Jasper, I always learn something new.
I dive in and tackle the first issue: Where to put my hut? The roof seems logical. I call our building’s manager and explain my plan.  He says I can’t do it – liability issues.

So I go to my backup plan: building the hut in our living room. This is not ideal for a number of reasons; the primary one being that it’s a hut in our living room.  But it’s the only real option I have.
My day starts with a trek down to the hardware store to pick up a dozen two-by-fours, a handful of cinder blocks, and some canvas. I begin to feel better about the project. There’s something satisfying about buying lumber. It makes me feel like a guy who builds porches and rec rooms and uses words like “drywall.”

Next I sling my duffel bag over my shoulder and hike off to Riverside Park. The Bible instructs us to get “the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook.” As I walk through New York’s version of nature, I stuff my bag full of leafy boughs and willows. It feels good. I’m accomplishing stuff. I’m sweating.

At 11am, back in my apartment, I begin hammering crossbeams and holding nails in my mouth and sweating a lot more. Three hours later, I actually have the skeleton of a bona fide hut. Which promptly collapses and smashes into the wall. I start again, adding extra struts, and this time it stays up.

“Oh my,” Julie says when she arrives home.

I ask her if she’s annoyed.

“A little. But more stunned that you actually built something. It’s enormous.”

The Bible says to dwell in the hut, so I plan to dwell as much as possible—eat my meals in my hut, read my books in my hut, sleep in my hut. I in¬vite Julie along, but she says she’ll let me “fly solo on this one.”

So that night, at eleven-thirty, I spread three blankets out on the wood floor. I lie down, put my hands behind my head, stare at the draped canvas, breathe in the citrus and willows, and try to figure out what I’m feeling.

First, I realize, I’m still on a high from building the hut. I put the thing up myself.  My elation is tainted with guilt, though. This sukkah is way too comfortable. This is supposed to remind me of the ancient huts in the desert, but here I am in a climate-controlled apartment—no sand, no wind, and no lack of food. I don’t have to worry about the freezing nights or blistering days or plagues, which killed forty thousand of the six hun¬dred thousand Israelites.

But that guilt, in turn, is relieved by this epiphany: God, if God exists, is ordering everyone—not just those with a book contract—to travel back in time and try to experience the world of the ancient Middle East. And this was critical for the Israelites – because only in knowing where you come from can you truly know who you are and where you’re going.

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Now granted, it’s not the flashiest story in the book, but it’s still one that resonated with me.  And not just the visual image of what amounts to one of those Lowes storage sheds sitting in an apartment living room.  It’s the deeper meaning of the act itself, and the way it helped A.J. get in touch with a part of him he didn’t really know he had.  You’ll recall that A.J.’s Jewish heritage is not exactly front and center in his life – as he puts it, he’s Jewish in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian!  And yet here he is, eating and sleeping and reading in his hut, palpably aware of a history within him, a history he didn’t actually live himself.  It’s almost like an anterograde amnesiac who suddenly gets his memory back, and everything becomes clear.  He remembers where he came from.  He knows who he is now.  And he knows where he needs to go.

Let me ask you something: is this not the sort of thing that happens here, every time you and I set foot in this place?  In our little “hut” at the corner of Church and Main?  I mean, throughout the week, we’re all over the place.  We go to work, we go to school, we run our errands, we have our appointments, we are pulled in a million directions.  But every Sunday morning, we walk through these doors and gather here with each other.  And we not only worship God and fellowship.  We remember.  Like building a hut.  We re-member a journey taken by those before us; a journey that is not our own but is our own.  We remember where we came from.  We remember who we are now.  And because of that, we know where we need to go.

That’s what we do in the church, week in and week out!  It’s what we’ve been doing for 154 years.  We’ve been building a little sukkah; we’ve been building a church. But not just with granite and plaster and bricks and boards.  Building it with our memories and our dreams; our mission and our fellowship. And aren’t you and I all the better for it?  Equipped to handle the world outside our hut; equipped to go into that world and bring others here to remember with us!  Equipped to build not just this hut, but God’s kingdom, right here on earth!

Now that’s not to say, of course, that re-membering our church is easy stuff.  It’s not.  It’s hard being the church today!  There was a time when Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights were sacred; for-church only.  But not any more.  There was a time when the church had everything it needed.  Not any more.  If you were at our congregational meeting last Sunday and heard Mike Beal’s report, or even if you’ve been following the financial updates in the bulletin every week, you know it’s not easy being the church these days.

Now I don’t bring this up to be all “Debbie Downer” here.  I bring it up to make a point: that when it’s not easy being the church, the temptation is to suffer a little amnesia.  To forget where we’ve come from, and who we are, and where we need to go.  And when we forget, it’s easy to become afraid.  And that’s a problem, friends!  Because fear can be a paralyzing thing, especially in the church. It can make us feel distant and detached from our relationship with God, from our brothers and sisters in Christ, from the mission and vision for God’s church.  When we let fear come into the hut with us, it becomes difficult to remember what the hut’s there for in the first place.

But thanks be to God – thanks be to God! – that we do not have to let fear set up permanent residence.  That we do not have to keep forgetting.  Because I am convinced that the most critical role the church plays in society today, the most critical role our church plays in this community, is to embrace and live into the one thing that helps us remember; the one thing that reminds us where we come from and who we are and where we need to go; the one thing that sends our fears running out the door: and that is hope. 

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.

Do you know what was going on when God spoke those wonderful words to the prophet Jeremiah?  The glorious city Jerusalem was under attack.  The Babylonians were on the cusp of ravaging the Promised Land and burning Israel to the ground.  It had been building up, like a boiling kettle for years; everyone had seen it coming.  Everyone was afraid; everyone had forgotten.  And in the midst of all of that, the prophet says to the people: God has plans for you.  Plans for your welfare and not for harm.  Plans to give you a future.  With hope.

So what does that hope look like here?  What helps us to re-member?  I’m going to ask you to do something with me this morning; and I’m warning you, this is going to feel kind of un-Presbyterian, okay? I want you to take a few moments to yourself, and think about this question: what do you cherish about our church?  What continues to draw you to this place and these people, when there are a zillion other things you could be doing with your time?  What do you cherish about our church?  Take a few moments silently to meditate on that……

Now I’m going to ask you to do something really un-Presbyterian – I want you to speak out.  Yes, in the middle of a sermon, people!  Speak out and tell me: what do you cherish about our church?

(the following were the things church members shared:)

Fellowship.  Church family.  Music.  Message.  Friendship.  History and tradition.  Mission.  Food!  Word of God.  Synergy.  Warmth.  Hope.  Faith-building.  Love.  Resilience.  Beauty.  Beacons.  Children.  The children's message.  Being a welcoming church.  Sunday School.  God!

You know, I did this same thing with the session last week at our session meeting.  And let me tell you, the things they shared and the things you just shared are some pretty powerful, amazing, hopeful things!  You obviously have a lot of hope in our church.  Which is why it’s important to remember that all those things we cherish and love about our church are so much more powerful than any fears we might have.  Let me say that again: all those things we cherish about our church are so much more powerful than any fears we might have. 

Hope is what defines us as the people of God.  Not fear.  Hope!  Hope is what brings us to this sanctuary on Sunday mornings.  Hope is what leads us to sing, to fellowship, to give of our time and talents and treasure.  Hope!  Hope is what leads us up the road to First Baptist on a Thursday night to serve dinner; hope is what our children experience every Sunday in SPARK.  Hope is what will bring us here next Sunday, Consecration Sunday, as we prepare for and dream up our church’s 155th year.   And believe me, my friends, when I say that making our heart-felt commitments to God’s church for the coming year – as you will be asked to do next week and as you’ve done in years past, as Lorie and I have done every one of our ten years here – making our commitments to God’s church for the coming year is the most hope-filled thing we can ever do as people of faith. 

In the coming week, may you and I prepare ourselves to make that declaration of tremendous hope in our church next Sunday.  Because, First Presbyterian, we build our hut together.  We remember where we came from, and who we are now, and where we need to go.  Hope is all we have.  And hope is most certainly all we’ll ever need.  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7, 11-14
Steve Lindsley
June 12, 2011

You’ve heard the expression before:  Expect the Unexpected.  Life isn’t always what it seems.  Things don’t always happen the way we think they will.  Think of the young couple that plans in excitement for their first baby, only to welcome quintuplets into the world.  Or the guy who spends a few dollars on a lottery ticket and ends up getting a return in their investment a few million times over.  It seems that the second you plan out something, from how the course of your day will go to what career path you take, something happens that changes everything.

This is no less true in our walk of faith, is it?  Just ask the people Jeremiah was writing to in our scripture today.  He wrote them at one of the more pivotal moments in their history – their exile to Babylon.  God’s people, a strong and proud nation, had harbored great kings like David and Solomon and enjoyed a prosperous existence.  Their temple was one of the finest architectural works of its time.  They were respected and feared by other nations.  All of that changed in 597 BC, when the great Babylonian empire descended on Jerusalem and destroyed it.  And they destroyed much more than bricks and mortar.  They destroyed the pride and religious identity that God’s people had possessed for centuries.  Most of them were carted off to live in Babylon as captives.  Living in a foreign land, they were people without both a physical and spiritual home.

This disaster was not entirely unexpected, at least according to the prophet Jeremiah.  For years, Jeremiah had spoken harsh words of judgement against Judah, predicting its unfaithfulness would lead to future disaster.  They thought they were invincible, the people did; they thought there was no chance that any foreign power could ever breach their walls and destroy their city and their spirit.  They were wrong.

And you would thing a man in Jeremiah’s position, given all his previous warnings that had fallen on deaf ears, you’d think he’d respond to the fall of Jerusalem with a resounding, “I told you so!”  Vindication, right?  Not really.  See, that’s the rub of being a prophet: you don’t get to say what you want to say, or what the people want you to say.  You have to say what God wants you to say. 

And what God wanted him to say in this time of exile, well, it wasn’t at all what the people were expecting.  Not even close!  In a land they did not know, as they ached and longed to return to Jerusalem, Jeremiah told the people of God to “build houses…plant gardens…take wives for your sons and multiply…”  In other words: make this strange and foreign land their permanent home, because they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. 

It would behoove us to ask the same question that those Hebrews undoubtedly asked: why would Jeremiah say such a thing??   Why in the world would God want God’s people to live among those Babylonians in a foreign land?  Doesn’t their existence as a nation and as God’s people depend on living freely in their own place?  Apparently not - and this must have been a bitter pill for the Hebrews to swallow.  For some reason - obviously beyond their understanding - this was now the place for God’s people.  And that’s not what they expected in the least.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the real beauty in all of this – something they certainly couldn’t have understood at the moment, but something they would come to understand much later.  That Jeremiah’s words, in spite of it’s radical message, was still a testament to the ongoing, never-ending reality of God’s love for God’s people – and of  God’s commitment to their long-term viability despite what they were going through.  Just like that well-known verse says:

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

I remember years ago, reading this verse for the first time and how it resonated with me in a way few verses do.  I think it was because of some things that were going on in my life at the time; and how comforting it was knowing that even as things around me were spinning out of control, even when I couldn’t see a rhyme or reason to anything, even then – especially then – God had plans.  And it wasn’t my job to necessarily know what those plans were.  It was my job to trust in the God who made them.

You know, it’s kind of interesting, this word Jeremiah uses here; a word that’s usually translated as “welfare” or “prosper.”  The actual Hebrew is shalom, typically rendered elsewhere in the Bible as “peace.”  God has plans for our peace.  That changes things a little bit, doesn’t it?  It’s not that God was assuring the people of great success or wealth or anything like that.  God was simply promising them a calm and reassurance that comes when we stop making plans while God is trying to make them for us.  Even as those Hebrews resided in Babylon, thousands of miles away from home, they were learning new ways to expect the unexpected when it came to their relationship with God.

Makes us wonder how unexpected it was on that day long ago when Jesus’ disciples gathered together without him.  Jesus had told them everything would be okay, but they had no idea what he meant by that.  And how could they?  It’s doubtful any of them had a clue that God’s spirit would come to them as tongues of fire on their heads, and in the ability to suddenly speak foreign languages.  They had no clue how Jesus would sustain them in his absence.  But God had a plan.

Which is why we, the church, can come to this table and take part in what we know as the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  Because if there’s ever an example of expecting the unexpected when it comes to matters of faith, it is this.  We may never know what it’s like to be held captive in a foreign land, but we do know what it means to be in a strange land spiritually; to live and work in a world that is fundamentally different from who we are and what we believe as people of God.  We may never have to know what’s it’s like to rely on God while the world around us literally crumbles and burns at our feet, but we do know what it’s like to put our trust and faith in God, even when we don’t know exactly where that trust and faith will lead us.  Even when we don’t have a plan.

And that’s why the Lord’s Supper is such a foundational part of our lives.  Here, we encounter a glimpse, just a peek, of the reconciliation that is present in this simple but profound meal.  Today, thousands of years later, we too participate in this meal and are renewed in our life, both individually and as the collective people of God.  And it is here, at this place, where we truly understand what it means to expect the unexpected.

Let me give you an example.  My most memorable communion experience happened when I was in the 9th grade, with 35 other high schoolers from my church at a Montreat youth conference one summer.  For the first part of the week, though, we acted like anything but a church youth group.  I can’t even remember what started it, but almost from the moment we pulled out of the church parking lot, our group was divided into two distinct factions.  You were either on one side or the other; there was no middle ground.  The anger and tension ran deep, and we spent the next few days on pins and needles as it seemed just a matter of time before everything would blow up into a huge nasty mess.

Luckily it never came to that.  Our youth pastor, thank goodness, saw what was happening, saw how it was tearing us apart.  And so at our Wednesday night devotions, our pastor did something quite unexpected.  With great sensitivity and a lot of love, he told us what he has witnessed that week - a youth group split down the middle, warring with each other, many hurt feelings on both sides.   He went on to say that, as the body of Christ, we were letting our anger and hostility get in the way of God’s healing presence.  With our heads hung low, every one of us knew that he was exactly right.
And that’s when he reached behind him and brought out a small tray with a plate of Wonder Bread, a gallon of grape juice and some small plastic cups.  He recounted the story of the first Last Supper, and all the turmoil that was going on there, all the division that was present, just like it was with us.  And he told us how, through all of that, Jesus and his disciples found something most unexpected – the transforming presence of God.  As the bread and juice were passed around our group, it was as if a wave of emotion rushed the Holy Spirit into our room.  We weren’t speaking in tongues, and there weren’t flickers of flame over our heads.  But there were tears of healing streaming down our cheeks; there were words of apology shared; there were hugs given out quite generously.  Our own little Pentecost! 

Let me tell you what I believe about the Lord’s Supper.  I believe that in some wonderful way, in a way we won’t ever be able to fully understand, God’s presence is made known to us in this simple meal.  I believe that, in the spirit of the Lord’s Supper, there is always the possibility for reconciliation between people – even people reconciling things within themselves.  I believe that, like those Hebrew people long ago, you and I can still live and exist in a “strange and foreign land;” a land which is our temporary home.  And we can live there, always aware of the fact that one day we will be united with God and experience the full meaning of “shalom.”  And we are reminded of that future hope, as well as what God can do in the present, every time we eat the bread and drink from the cup.

And I believe that every time we come to the table, we should be prepared to expect the unexpected.  That’s the thing about God’s plans, y’all.  Rarely are they what you think they are.  And you know, there’s something incredibly liberating and thrilling about that!  Thanks be to God!  AMEN.