The Mayberry Preacher

REMEMBERING HOME

Psalm 137: 1-9; Luke 15: 1-7
Steve Lindsley
June 2, 2013

 

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Tell me what you think of when I say the word “home.

That’s how I began our Bob Chilton Bible study a week ago - the dozen of us gathered around the coffee table at Pages Bookstore here in town.  As is my custom, I’d given them today’s scripture in advance.  But before we cracked open our Bibles that morning, I asked them to take a second and just tell me - tell me what they thought of when I said the word “home.

And this is what they told me:

Home is where I grew up.
Home is where my roots are.
Home is where my family is.
Home is where I find comfort and support.
When I’m not home, I feel homesick.
Home is wherever I can relax.
Home is where I find a sense of peace, comfort and security.
Home is where I always feel welcomed.

We talked about stories of home – of the smells of sugar cookies and meatloaf coming from Grandma’s kitchen, of being somewhat isolated on the family farm and looking forward to Sunday afternoons spent with other families and children, of college dorm rooms and towns that take on a feel of home, of homes with doors that always stayed unlocked.

We also talked about the fact that “home” may not be, for some, a place remembered so fondly.  Like the college student who, at the end of spring semester, lamented the fact that she would have to return to the home she grew up in, where harsh words and broken promises were all that awaited her.  For her, the new circle of friends on her sorority hall – that was her new family.  That’s her new home.  We talked about the fact that, for some, home may not be a place worth returning to.

So we talked a lot about home.  But we did something else, too.  Something more important.  We remembered home.  We put it back together, whatever it was for us, whatever it still is for us.  Good and bad, blessings and warts.  We re-membered home, right there in Pages Bookstore over a cup of coffee.

Which, I might note, was a much safer “re-membering” than the kind the Israelites engaged in in today’s scripture.  And it wasn’t a coffee table that stood in between them.  It was a tree – a willow tree.  Nor was there a hot cup of jo resting on its surface.  Instead, it was musical instruments hanging in the tree’s branches; small harps and a few lyres.  Instruments that were crafted for the sole purpose of being played.  But they weren’t.  Instead they just hung there, suspended indefinitely; hung there by the people lying underneath who looked like anything other than people eager to play some music.  One has her head in her hands.  Another is hunched over his lap so you can't see his face.  And another is leaning up against the second; their arm draped over his back.

They are the Israelites in Babylonian exile, and they are the owners of those harps and lyres.  They've hung their instruments in the trees because they cannot play them anymore.  They don’t have the heart.  They are emotionally and spiritually bankrupt; the musical muse has left town.  Actually, they are the ones who have left town – ripped from their beloved Jerusalem, their homeland; now exiles in a strange and foreign land.  They have made the journey from familiar surroundings into the unfamiliar wilderness.  They are there underneath the willow tree by the waters of Babylon, but all they can think of is where they are not.  And even as their captors mockingly ask them, dare them to “sing a song of Zion,” they are unable to.  They could make themselves hold the instruments and press flesh on metal strings and strum, but the sound would not be as it should be.  The song has left them.  And they wonder: how will they ever sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?

They cannot sing songs of home, because they are not at home.  They are the furthest thing from home.  And many of them – most of them – would never see their home again. They are in the worst kind of mourning.  They stand vigilant, daring time itself to remove cherished memories of home from their minds.  And they are angry, too.  Full of rage.  So angry that they even contemplate the unthinkable, of dashing a Babylonian baby’s head against the rocks.  They wouldn’t really do it, of course.  But in that moment – in that painful, rage-filled moment – they at least allow the horrific thought to enter their minds.

What does it feel like to feel that passionately, that intensely, about home?  What is it like to miss home like that – or to hate, to despise home like that?  Do you remember the scene in Forrest Gump, when a grown-up Jenny returns to her childhood home with Forrest?  The dilapidated structure sits in the middle of an overgrown corn field, shingles falling off, roof caving in.  It is an ugly sight – but not nearly as ugly as the memories Jenny has of the things that went on inside there when she was but a little girl.  Memories she had spent an adult lifetime trying to forget.  She hasn’t been back there in years.  She stares at the house blankly, then in blind rage starts throwing rocks at it, over and over, screaming at the top of her lungs, shattering windows and eventually falling to the ground in exhaustion.  All of this, witnessed by Forrest Gump; who muses in a way only Forrest Gump could: Sometimes, I guess, there just aren’t enough rocks.

Home does that to us, you know?  This deep-seeded part of us at our very core. And it’s true – sometimes there aren’t enough rocks to throw, or willow trees to hang up our harps and our hearts.  Home does that to us, because it’s so much more than a place.  It is an inescapable reality at our most primeval level.  It is, dare I say, spiritual.

So let me ask you, First Presbyterian: what does home mean to you?  It is a place?  Is it certain people?  Is your sense of home something you are drawn to, or something you avoid?  Are you like the Hebrews hanging up your harps when you’re away from home, or are you like Jenny, where there never will be enough rocks?

You know what home was like for Jesus?  He tells us in our other scripture today.  A story he shares; one of those wonderful “on-the-fly” moments Jesus specialized in.  There is tension in the group he is with at that moment; those who, as The Message translation so eloquently puts it, were of “doubtful reputation.” And then those of prestige and power who did not like the kind of company Jesus kept.  Tension abounds.  Just another day in the home that was first century Palestine.  Just like many homes today.

So Jesus tells them a story and puts his audience at the center of it: Say you have a hundred sheep and one gets lost.  Who among you would not leave the 99 behind in the wilderness and go looking for the lost one, until you found it?  And when you found it, who among you would not bring it home, rejoicing, and call all your neighbors and friends to come over and celebrate with you?

Jesus tells the story by asking a question, a rhetorical one, which means everyone knows the answer without him having to say it.  Notice the phrasing – “Who wouldn’t go” – implying, of course, that everyone would.  Even though going didn’t make a lick of sense, leaving the 99 to find the one?  Cost analysis and spread sheets and good old-fashioned common sense say doing such a thing is foolish, a bad idea.  Too great a risk.  But this is what families do, right?  They care for each other.  Love each other.  And when one is lost, the search begins in earnest until the one is found.  That’s what Jesus tells them home – his home – is like.

In his book A Room Called Remember, Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner tells the story of a dream he had years ago that he’s never forgotten:

I dreamt that I was staying in a hotel somewhere and that the room I was given was a room that I loved.  It was a room where I felt happy and at peace, where everything seemed the way it should be and everything about myself seemed the way it should be too.  Then, as the dream went on, I wandered off to other places and did other things and finally, after many adventures, ended back at the same hotel again.  Only this time I was given a different room which I didn’t feel comfortable in at all.  It seemed dark and cramped, and I felt dark and cramped in it.  So I made my way down to the man at the desk and told him…on my earlier visit I’d had this marvelous room which was just right for me and I’d very much like if possible to have it again.  The clerk was very understanding.  He said that he knew exactly the room I meant and that I could have it again anytime; and all I had to do was ask for it by name.  So then, of course, I asked him what the name of the room was.  The name of the room, he said, was Remember.  And it is your home, now and always. (Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, pgs. 2-3)

Let me ask you something: is this church that “home” for you?  Is this community of faith where you belong?  Check out what happens when I take those responses that I got from the Bible study folks and plug in the word “church” instead:

My church is where I grew up.
My church is where my roots are.
My church is where my family is.
My church is where I find comfort and support.
When I’m not at my church, I feel homesick.
My church is where I can relax.
My church is where I find a sense of peace, comfort and security.
My church is where I always feel welcomed.

You know what?  This church is your home!  This is where you belong!  This is where you are loved and cared for, where you are supported, where you can relax and be yourself.  This is where your family – your church family is.  And this is where you are always welcome. 

And like home, there are also times when feelings can get hurt, when there are misunderstandings, when there can be pain.  Like home, it’s not always perfect.  But we are family; and we stick together and love each other no matter what.  Our reason for being the church is not to be perfect, but to be faithful.  Faithful to God and faithful to each other.  That is what Jesus’ home is like for you and for me.

And that, my friends, is the beauty of what we get to do, every single Sunday morning and every time we are gathered together.  We remember home!  We tell our collective story; the one that talks about a God who would drop everything to come find us if we got lost; and then throw a huge party to celebrate our homecoming.  About a God who gives us the strength and will to grab those harps and lyres off the tree branches and sing hometown songs in strange lands; about a God who weeps with us and provides all the rocks we need to throw at an ugly past. 

So let’s remember home together, shall we?  Let’s live together as the family of God, always searching for that “Remember room” where everything has its place; where everything seems the way that it should be.  Let’s be the home of God together, and for a world that is so desperately looking for a place to belong.  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, welcome home.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

FINDING EVERYTHING IN AN EMPTY TOMB

Luke 24: 1-12
Steve Lindsley
March 31, 2013
Easter Sunday

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There is a place out in the vast expanse of our universe that has within it, quite literally, nothing.  A massive void, nearly a billion light-years in diameter.  Inside this void you will find no stars, no planets, no galaxies, no gases.  One scientist, realizing the limits of the human brain to comprehend such things, simply described it as “a big bubble in the cosmic pancake batter. ”  If that image doesn’t describe this void any better, at least it makes it sound more tasty. (http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040449&item_id=93051428&keywords=massive%20void, visited on 3.29.2010)

So for the record, one light year is the distance light travels in a year; roughly six trillion miles.  You and I have church members who run marathons, and 26 miles seems like a long distance to me.  Try six trillion miles, and then multiply that by a billion.  That's how large this void in our universe is.

I don’t know about you, but It’s hard for me to comprehend something that massive.  But you know what’s even harder?  Comprehending something that massive with nothing in it.  I mean, surely the scientists have missed a lone planet or a renegade star, right?  It's got to have something in there.  And yet, all the data is conclusive: there is nothing there. This billion-light year void way out there in space is 100% empty.

How do you think something like that feels?  It’s an odd question, I know – we’re not accustomed to thinking about something like space having feelings.  But humor me for a minute: what does a billion light year void in our universe feel like?  What kind of words come to mind - Cold?  Alone?  Hopeless?  Isolated?  What would it feel like to be right in the middle of a cosmic heap of nothing?

Empty space.  An empty place.  An empty tomb.  A universe of nothing.  A tomb of nothing. 

“Perplexed” is the word Luke uses to describe how they felt when they entered that nothingness on Easter morning.  Perplexed.  Because it was not at all what they expected to find there.  They fully anticipated a body there, because that is what you find in tombs.  A tomb without a body in it is....well, it’s empty space, isn’t it?  They fully expected to find the body of Jesus there, and as was their custom, they would anoint that body with the spices they brought. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

How do you think Mary Magdalene felt in the midst of all that emptiness – the agonizing pain one feels when the space their best friend used to occupy is now empty? She was in the midst of the week-long period of mourning, as was their custom.  They all were.  And now, just three days removed, she has come to the tomb, armed with those spices; the ritual of her faith being the only thing filling up the emptiness.  She expected to find Jesus’ body there.  And what did she find? Nothing.  An empty tomb.

We all have “massive voids” in our life, of one kind or another; and we know what they feel like: the empty space that exists when things that used to be there, or should be there, are not.  It happens when we give our heart to someone who doesn't give theirs back.  It happens when we practice and practice and practice, and still don't make the team.  It happens when we wake up the day after being let go from our job with nothing to do.  It happens when we try to do the right thing but somehow keep screwing it up over and over again.  It happens when everything changes, and yet nothing seems to change.

We try, of course, to pretend the emptiness isn’t there; that we have our fill.  Because the society you and I live in doesn’t look kindly upon empty things.  So we tell ourselves, and tell others,  Everything is fine.  We’re managing real well since the funeral.  Oh, we have plenty in the bank account.  No, no, we’re not depressed.  My mom and Dad – they’re getting along great.  We’re not anxious one bit about life after graduation. We’re just fine. We’re fine. 

And yet even our most well-crafted and well-intentioned rituals cannot fill up the empty space.  These are huge cold spots; massive voids. Coming to the tomb and finding no body there.  How does that make you feel?   

They were perplexed, scripture tells us.  Do ya think?!  This is not what happens!  From the time they were tiny children, from that moment when they first understood the fleeting nature of life and inevitability of death, they understood the harsh and iron-clad truth: tombs have bodies in them that never leave.  So they were perplexed, and certainly other things too.  Confused.  Frightened.  Discombobulated.  When the gospel of Matthew talks about an “earthquake” at the tomb on Easter morning, it very well could have been the earthquate going on inside of Mary's mind! 

Two men in dazzling clothes suddenly appear next to them.  More perplexing; more confusion!  Don't you see?  From the minute the women set foot on that sacred ground, from the minute they peered inside the tomb, all bets were off!  The two men – not angels, as other gospels suggest, but two men.  In dazzling clothes, it says – sequins, maybe?  Is it their clothes that were dazzling, or what they said that made them all bright and shiny?  The question they asked; posed in the context of billions of light years of questions that surely were running through the minds of those women still trying to make sense of an empty tomb.  The question they asked:

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Why were they looking for the living among the dead?  Better yet, was it even the living they were looking for?  They had come to the tomb that morning to anoint a body, three days dead. And yet the bright and shiny men had asked them why they were looking for the living.  Is it possible that those women didn’t fully understand what they were looking for on that Easter morning?  Is it possible that we don’t, either? 

Every year, on this day, we follow in the footsteps of those women.  We come before this cross – a symbol of death, the worst kind of death – and we cover it with flowers.  Front and back, top to bottom.  A cross.  It’s almost as if we know that those dazzling men weren’t just speaking to the women.  They are still speaking, and they are asking us that same question today.

So why, my friends?  Why?  Why do WE come to this place, on this day, looking for the living among the dead?

Is it because we feel we have to, because it’s Easter?  Or could it be because we, like Mary and the others, want so much to fill that massive void with something?  We do not like empty things!  We much prefer to find life in places where there was once death.  We are creatures of beginnings, not endings.  Around 350 years ago, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal surmised that the human heart is like an “infinite abyss.” Perhaps a billion light years big. He said that we try in vain to fill our hearts with everything around us — education, jobs, homes, money, friends, family.  But none of these can fill the void completely.  And so as Pascal so aptly puts it:

This infinite abyss can only be filled with an infinite and immutable object;
in other words, God.

Do you see what this means?  Do you see the astounding paradox of it all?  In finding nothing in the tomb, those women found everything.  In confronting the cold dark abyss of death, they were surprised to find new life.  That is what Mary and the other women came to understand as they ran back to find the others and tell them of all they had not seen and all they’d seen. Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he is risen!

You know, every Easter Sunday we gather in this sanctuary and celebrate the resurrection to the nth degree.  We do Easter pretty well, I gotta say!  We wear our lovely Easter outfits and ties; we bring our flowers to the cross.  We sing rousing hymns like “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and “Christ is Alive!” and fill this empty space with joyful sound.  We gather before the Lord's table and share once again this holy meal.  There’s an extra spirit in the air – handshakes become hugs, smiles smile a bit wider, and the joy of the day rests upon each of our hearts.

Have you noticed how it never gets old, no matter how many Easter services we attend in our life; no matter how many times we bring our flowers and sing our hymns and share in our meal?  Have you noticed that the joy is always there?  You know why that is?  It’s because what fills the empty, hollow spaces on this glorious day is more than we can possibly imagine; more than we could ever hope for.  You and I plunge head-first into the scandalous, outrageous reality of this day – that death does not have the last word.  That death has been transformed into new life.  That you and I are transformed in it.

In fact, that's why I love the way the gospel of Mark ends the Easter story.  It’s similar to Luke's – the women come to the tomb, they find it empty, they’re met by a stranger who tells them to go tell the world.  And you know what happens after that in Mark?  You know what happens?  Nothing!  Absolutely nothing! Unlike the other gospels, there are no resurrection appearances, there’s no road to Emmaus or doubting Thomas, there’s no eating grilled fish on the beach with Jesus.  Nothing but empty space.

Except it’s not really empty.  Because you and I get to fill that space up!  You and I get to write our own ending to the Easter story!  Those women have come to us, to tell us the Good News: that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  And you and I get to fill up that space and write our own ending and respond with our lives – by living as Easter people.  By being a transformed people.  By following the resurrected Jesus in loving our enemies and caring for the least of these and healing the broken and infusing new life in billion light-year voids.

So we leave the tomb behind – because, as the shiny guys said, he’s not there anymore.  Jesus is out there, waiting for us to meet him and tell the world that they need not look for the living among the dead one moment longer.

So what are we waiting for, my friends?  What are we waiting for?!  Let's go find the risen Jesus!  Let’s go find him and invite him to live in us forever, so we can embody him in this world.  So empty tombs are no longer an ending but a beginning.  Let's go find Jesus - because he is alive.  He is alive!!  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God!  AMEN!

THERE WAS ROOM FOR DENNIS

Luke 2: 1-20
Steve Lindsley
December 24, 2012 - Christmas Eve

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I want you to know, my friends, that I had a nice little Christmas Eve meditation all planned out for you this evening. It was called “The Problem of Skipping Christmas, as you can see in your bulletin. I rather liked it, actually - it was all about John Grisham’s book and the movie with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd.  But I'll have to save it for next year.

Because I learned earlier today that it was not the message I was supposed to share with you this evening, on this Christmas Eve. The message that you needed to hear is "Thank You." A simple but extremely heartfelt “Thank You.” The thanks comes from a man named Dennis. You probably don’t know him, and that’s perfectly okay.  He wanted me to tell you how much he appreciates all you did for him, and how he’ll never forget this Christmas Eve for the rest of his life, thanks to you.

I got to know Dennis around 10 o’clock this morning.  That was when my home phone rang. “Is this the pastor,” the man on the other end asked. You know the sound a human voice makes when you can tell they’re at their rope’s end; when they would have a mental breakdown if they had enough energy to?  That was the sound of the voice on the other end of the phone.

I answered that yes, I was the pastor. And that's when he told me that his name was Dennis. He was at the Brintle truck stop at the 89 & 77 intersection, hanging out in the lobby area at the front where it was warm and dry. He had been there all morning, after his last ride had dropped him off because he couldn't take him any further.  All Dennis asked was if he could sleep on the church floor in the corner of some room, just for a night; someplace warm and dry, because he hadn't slept indoors in two weeks.  And if he could get a loaf of bread or something, that'd be great too.

I told Dennis that I could help him out and would be there in an hour.  Except it wasn't just "me" who was going to help him.  It was "you" – all of you here tonight.  Because Dennis hadn't called my home phone that morning to speak to Steve Lindsley.  He called to speak to the pastor of First Presbyterian Church.  He was calling all of you.  So from this point on, it was “you” who was going to help him.

So, YOU all drove to The Hollows on Hwy. 52 and booked Dennis a room for the night.  After that, you headed across the street to Sagebrush and got a $25 gift certificate, since they’d be open that night until 8pm.  You did this with the benevolence fund our church has to help folks like Dennis in need.  With those two things taken care of, you then drove out to Brintle’s to meet Dennis.  You found him right at the entrance; a man in his late 40's, you would guess, wearing heavy clothing and boots and a backpack filled with everything he owned.  He was a broken man, you could tell; not someone who would take advantage of the situation.  He was so very glad to see you.

As you headed back into town, Dennis told you his story.  He was coming from Portland, Maine, where he had lost his job two weeks before. He had a brother in Texas who said he could take him in, but he'd have to get there by himself. He had no home, no car, nothing.  So he had been hitchhiking his way, relying completely on the kindness of strangers.  You asked him where he spent last night.  Under an overpass in Virginia, he said.  He had a fire going to keep him warm, but a state trooper came by in the middle of the night and made him put it out, because he said the concrete bridge might burn down.  "I'm just so melancholy," he said to you.  "I don't know what to do, other than keep going.  Keep going and find room whenever I can." 

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression "no room at the inn,” doesn't it?

You’ve probably never seen someone get so excited over a restaurant gift card.  What you’d consider to be a gift you give someone when you can't think of anything else, Dennis treated like it was gold, frankincense and myrrh.  As you pulled into the hotel parking lot, he told you with more than a hint of joy that he would go get something to eat and bring it back to his room, where he would eat and "sleep like a baby,” because he was so incredibly tired.

You asked Dennis what he was going to do tomorrow, knowing that it would be Christmas Day and there wouldn’t be many people at all on the roads, much less kind strangers.  He told you that he would probably try and get back over to Brintle, knowing that a major thoroughfare like I-77 would be his best shot.  And let me say as an aside, if any of you have any interest in possibly helping Dennis get back over there tomorrow morning after he checks out, please come see me after worship tonight.

As you said goodbye to Dennis, he couldn't stop saying "thank you.”  Could not stop saying it.  The man was starving, exhausted, at his rope's end.  But he was so thankful, so incredibly thankful.  Because, as it turned out, there was room at the Inn for Dennis.  And he couldn’t have been more grateful for it.

So let me congratulate you for what you did this morning.  But still, it doesn’t seem right, does it?  Doesn’t seem fair.  After all, it’s Christmas!  And this is a time for family and friends.  This is a time for Christmas traditions we engage in year after year after year.  This is time to get the Christmas tree decorated, to wrap and open presents, to go caroling and attend Christmas concerts and pageants.  To go to the church Christmas Eve Communion and Candlelight service. 

But that’s not what Christmas really is, if we’re honest with ourselves.  In fact, the truth of the matter is that Dennis’ Christmas looks a whole lot more like the original one than our own.  There was nothing planned or anticipated about that first Christmas.  There were no traditions.  It was chaotic, haphazard, unplanned; one crisis blending seamlessly into another.  It wasn’t like Mary and Joseph had planned this long journey to Bethlehem – they were forced to go against their will.  No telling where they slept along the way, if they slept at all.  No telling where they got their food, if they ate at all.  Relying totally and completely on the kindness of strangers, when and if that kindness ever came.   

And then, in their hour of greatest need, when Mary was about to give birth to her firstborn and there was no room at the inn, they found help.  They found YOU.  And while they would’ve gladly slept on the church floor in the corner of some room, you got them a room at The Hollows and a gift card to Sagebrush.  You welcomed them into your life and into your hearts.  And they were so grateful for it.  They were changed by it – as were you.

I’m going to be thinking a lot about Dennis this Christmas; about that other message we were apparently supposed to hear this year.  I’m going to be thinking about the fact that he’ll be sleeping in a warm bed with a full belly.  That on this night, at least, he has a home.  That there really was room for him after all.  In fact, I think that should be the title for this new Christmas Eve meditation: “There Was Room For Dennis.”  Yeah, that sounds right. 

My friends, let there always be room for the strangers in our midst.  Let there always be room for God to come along and surprise us with a new message.  And on this Christmas Eve, may there always be room for Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, in spite of our routines and traditions and celebrations.  May we welcome them into our hearts and into our lives, this holy night and forevermore.  Come, Immanuel, Come.  Thanks be to God, AMEN.

******

POSTSCRIPT: After worship I was immediately inundated by half a dozen folks who wanted to help Dennis even more than we already had.  Within minutes, arrangements were made for a church member to drive him to the bus station in Winston-Salem in the morning (yes, Christmas morning), pay for a bus ticket to Texas, and provide him an envelope of cash to help him out the rest of the way. Once again, I am blown away by the amazing generosity of this church, and the miracles that God can perform through you.  Merry Christmas!

FINDING THE PERFECT GIFT

Micah 5:2-5; Luke 1: 46-55
Steve Lindsley
December 23, 2012

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You want to know when you are deep in the throes of Christmas; the last few days leading up to the glorious yuletide consummation?  It’s when you find yourself standing in a ridiculously long line at Best Buy, or Wal-Mart, or Target, or Belks.  You are there despite the revulsion of every fiber in your being; a true case of mind over matter.  In your hands you hold the reason for this self-torture – a gift.  You picked it out because the one you love had asked for it; placed it at the top of their Christmas wish list.  Is it something they need?  Maybe.  Is it something they must have for Christmas to be a success?  Probably not. 

But this is what we subject ourselves to every time, without fail.  A lot of lines and a lot of gifts.  For better or for worse, it’s become something of annual rite of passage.  Last year alone, the average American spent a little over $700 on Christmas presents.   In case you’re wondering, that puts our country pretty high up on the list – second only to Luxembourg by a mere $70.    There’s always a bit of a backlash over the commercialization of Christmas and the rampant consumerism that turns December gift cheer into January credit card angst, but suffice to say that the tradition of Christmas presents isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-americans-spend-on-christmas-2011-12, http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/12/13/christmas-spending-by-country/, visited on 12.10.2012)

But here’s the thing: not all Christmas gifts can be bought in stores. Some of the best gifts come in lots of different ways.  Even in song.  In one of our scriptures today, Mary sings a song that, I would suggest to you, is a gift in and of itself – a gift in response to hearing the good news that had just been shared with her; the good news that she was to give birth to the Messiah, God’s son.  And just like one of those Christmas presents under our Christmas tree at home, as we peel the wrapping paper off this gift, this song, we discover a little more about the kind of gift it was to Mary – and to all of us as well.
At the very first tear of the wrapping paper, as we catch that first glimpse of what’s inside, we find that Mary’s song is a gift that catches us off-guard.  Mary, after all, was not expecting a child.  There was no reason for her to!  But this news of God’s arrival was not just news for her.  Listen to what the prophet Micah said years before:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
Who are one of the little clans of Judah,
From you shall come forth for me
One who is to rule in Israel…

Now I’ve always loved the minor prophets.  And not because they are somehow “minor,” but because they pack a punch in their shorter books.  Quality over quantity, as my high school English teacher would say.  I love the prophet Micah because, after unloading this message of doom and gloom in the first four chapters of his book, he drops this little wonder in our laps.  Surprise!  God’s mighty and redemptive act; not just coming, but coming out of Bethlehem.  Bethlehem, of all places!  This does not fit our way of understanding things.  This is not how we expect God to act, to move in this world of ours.

That’s because we’re not used to kings coming out of Bethlehem.  It’s the last thing we expect.  We expect kings to come from big places like Jerusalem and the like.  Not Bethlehem.  It begs the question: what little miracles have we missed because we weren’t looking for them?  Better yet, how many times have we been oblivious to God’s light because we’ve been too focused on the darkness?  If this gift we’re unwrapping tells us anything from the very first tear, it is that God’s greatest act comes when we are caught off-guard by news that, at first glance, may seem to be anything but good news.  How does the expression go: the day is darkest before the dawn?  There is a reason that God’s king comes out of a place like Bethlehem; there’s a reason that grace follows our human brokenness.  What the world calls “making lemons out of lemonade,” we people of faith know as “God’s grace-filled transformation.” And thanks be to God for it!

We’re not done unwrapping this gift, of course, so we peel off another layer.  And when we do, we find that this gift does something else – it changes things.  It changes things.  Which shouldn’t come as a surprise.  In case you haven’t heard, babies have a way of changing things!  It’s been ten years since Lorie and I crossed that threshold, and to be honest it’s kind of hard remembering what the “pre-kid” world was like.  But every now and then, I have flashbacks.  Our house, once a respectable testimony to two fairly successful thirty-somethings, quickly became overrun with stuffed animals, pack-and-plays, any number of toys that light up and sing, and used baby bottles resting on practically every flat surfaces.   Before our baby, I used to feed hobbies like fly-fishing and writing poetry; afterwards I became an expert at changing diapers with my eyes closed – which is pretty much how I did them at 2 in the morning.  The content of conversation between my wife and I changed, too – from “Let’s go see a movie tonight” to “Can’t wait for that to come out on DVD;” from “Eddie Bauer is having a sale this weekend” to “2-for-1 bulk diapers at Wal-Mart, yesss!” 

Babies change things!  Jesus’ birth changed things.  It changed things for Mary and Joseph.  Their lives would never be the same.  They’d have to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s hand, so eager to protect his power.  They’d have to deal with the beauty and the burden of raising God’s son.

Jesus’ birth changed things, for the world.  What was it that Mary sang about: bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry and sending the rich away.  That’s the sign of a changed world, my friends.  That’s the kind of thing that happens when the God of the universe chooses to become human and walk this earth as we walk it; breathe the same air in his lungs that we do, sleep and eat and live and bleed and die.  When God is doing those sorts of things, nothing can be the same again.

So there is God, doing something new in tiny Bethlehem.  Things are changing!  There is God, telling Mary she’s going to have a baby, and that baby will be God’s son.  Things are changing!  And in all of this change, we are assured of this one truth: that God is in control, even when things around us seem to be spinning out of control.  That God is faithful, even when we struggle to have faith ourselves.  That God is with us, and never more so than when we find ourselves in the midst of chaos – because that same God comes to change things with this wonderful gift we’re almost done unwrapping.

And so as we peel off that very last piece of wrapping paper, and the gift is revealed in full, we ultimately discover that this Christmas gift is a gift of joy.  In fact, that joy is the reason for the song in the first place. My soul magnifies the Lord, Mary sings.  This is a joy that comes from the heart – not token appreciation.  It comes from deep within; an expression of the glory of God magnified in her presence.  It’s a realization that Mary has done nothing to deserve this gift, never could; and yet she is perfectly okay with that, perfectly fine with just accepting it as it is.  Pure, unfiltered joy!

You know what this joy is like?  It’s like the Grinch in the children’s Christmas special, in that moment when his heart grows three sizes.  And remember that little x-ray device that comes in from the side of the television screen, and it hovers over his chest and shows this beating heart; and then suddenly it grows and grows and grows until it pops through the metal rim of the x-ray device as if such a thing could happen!  It can’t be contained, this joy.  It can’t be snuffed out or done away with.  Joy that fills a human heart, a Grinch heart, so completely that the only way to come close to expressing it is through song!

Joy!  I’m telling you, my friends, if there ever was a time when we needed that kind of joy to burst our hearts wide open, it is now.  If there ever was a moment when God’s redemptive and healing grace should permeate our lives, it is now.

I wonder if you noticed last Sunday in church, a mere 48 hours after the horrific events that took place at an elementary school in Connecticut, I wonder if you noticed which candle it was that the Carlisle family lit on our Advent wreath?  Did you notice?  It was the candle of Joy.  And as they lit it, this is what they told us:

This candle is for JOY, the joy of the coming of Christ into the world, that we may all be in relationship with God once again. The joy of God's love is never-ending and speaks anew to us today. So let us welcome the coming of Jesus into our lives with joy.

I heard that there were people in Connecticut and elsewhere who took their Christmas decorations down last week.  I know there are churches across the country who’ve struggled mightily to locate the joy of this season, of this gift in the midst of such tragedy.  And I get that, I really do.  Last Sunday’s worship service was one of the toughest I’ve ever had to lead, and I didn’t even have to preach.  Which is why I’m so grateful for the wonderful “sermon” our choir members preached through its Christmas Cantata.  Once again, joy in song!

And see, that’s the amazing thing about this gift, if the past few weeks have taught us anything, if the brokenness of our world has anything to show us.  It is that you and I are called to be stubborn in celebrating the joy of this wonderful gift.  Even when we may not always feel that joy; even when things around us threaten to pull us away from that joy.  Thanks be to God that the joy of this amazing gift does not depend on whether we always feel it or not.  Thanks be to God that God’s amazing grace comes to the tiny town of Bethlehem, to a young woman unexpectedly, not in spite of the world’s brokenness but precisely because of it! 

And you know the really neat thing about this, First Presbyterian?  It is that in our stubbornness to cling on to God’s joy, we are empowered and emboldened to share that joy with a world in desperate need of hearing it.  Sharing it loudly, sharing it with conviction.  Demanding it! 

Just like one of our own did a month ago.  It’s quickly become one of my favorite stories of this holiday season. The way Shasta tells it, their family was enjoying a long Thanksgiving weekend down at Myrtle Beach and took in a seasonal tradition – the annual Christmas regatta.  Boat after boat, decked out in holiday cheer, paraded by to the amusement of the gathered crowd.  And at the end, a boat with a young Mary and Joseph standing up on the bow for all to see. 

Except there was one thing that was missing.  Well, not really missing.  It’s just that baby Jesus was wrapped most completely in bands of cloth, buried from view in Mary’s embrace.  It seemed strange if you knew the scene – from a distance, it looked like it was just Mary and Joseph standing there, just the two of them.  It didn’t seem right.  Something was missing.

Which is precisely when Sam Brown, in the middle of the Myrtle Beach Christmas regatta, started screaming at the top of his lungs:

SHOW US THE BABY!
SHOW US THE BABY!
SHOW US THE BABY!

Screaming it over and over until Mary finally did – lifting the baby out of the blankets, lifting him high into the air so everyone could see him.   So everyone could see the precious gift and feel the joy.

God, show your church the baby in the manger.  Show us the perfect gift of your light that shines into our darkness; your love that is greater than all our fears.  Show us the baby so we can be caught off-guard by your presence, so our hearts and our world can be changed.  And most of all, show us the baby so we may embrace the joy we so desperately seek, and the joy you so willingly provide.  For there is no present, no gift, that we long to unwrap more.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

IT HAD TO BE THE MANGER

Luke 2: 1-7
Steve Lindsley
December 9, 2012

Listen to Sermon

So – there are Mary and Joseph, making their way through the streets of the little town of Bethlehem.  It’s been a long journey – four days long – and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.  The emperor had decreed that a census be taken, and every man and his family had to return to the place of their birth.  Joseph was from Bethlehem, so he was forced to make the trip, along with his fiancé Mary, who was set to give birth to her child any day now.

Dusk is descending upon them as they walk through the city streets, but that’s not their main concern.  Mary is in labor, and with each passing second her pain increases.  Joseph is frantic.  He runs from door to door, desperately trying to find a place for her.  He knocks on them and yells for help.  Either they answer and tell him “no,” or they just don’t answer at all.

Then Joseph knocks on the door of the resident innkeeper, a good-hearted soul who tries to help people whenever he can.  He sees Joseph there; his wife-to-be behind him bent over in agony on the donkey’s back.  He hates it, because he filled his last room earlier in the evening.  If he had a vacancy, he’d give it to them in a heartbeat.  But there’s no room.  No room.  He thinks for a second about the empty stable behind the inn where the animals are kept – but come on, that’s no place for a woman to give birth to her child!

This is the Christmas story, right?  The Christmas story we know and love.  The one we read and hear and see time and time again every December.  And we know what happens next – we know that the innkeeper will offer Mary and Joseph his stable, despite his reservations.  We know that the young couple will happily accept his offer, and they will make their way to the wooden shack out back – or the cave in the mountainside, if you prefer – and will be greeted by sheep and goats and cattle and hay – lots and lots of hay.  And we know that there, in that animal stable, Jesus will be born.

But let’s play a little game here, shall we?  Let’s imagine a different ending to the Christmas story.  Imagine that, just as the innkeeper is about to mention the stable out back, he has another thought.  A brilliant thought – why didn’t he think of this before!  A good friend of his in city government, one of the “higher-ups,” owes him a favor.  Told him to give him a call when he needed anything.  Why not now?

So the innkeeper quickly leads Mary and Joseph a few blocks down the street, to the ritzy part of town, where the city official lives.  His house is one of the largest in Bethlehem, befitting a man with his prestige and wealth.  It has all the amenities of the day.  He knocks on the door and the man’s servant answers.  Then the city official comes.  A few words are exchanged in whispers, and the man graciously nods to the visitors.  Mary and Joseph are brought inside, immediately greeted by the house servants.  Give them everything they need, the gentleman instructs.

Mary and Joseph are quickly taken to the guest room, which is nicer than any place they’d ever seen before.  Mary is laid on a comfortable bed; Joseph sitting in a chair by her side.  Both are given water to drink.  The house servants tend to Mary; one of them even happens to be a midwife.  The time comes, and baby Jesus is born and promptly placed in a lovely basinet; a family heirloom passed down the generations.  Everything Mary and the baby need is provided for them.  Jesus is born into a scene of comfort and security and luxury.  Jesus is welcomed into the world in the grandest of fashion.  Jesus is born as the king he would one day become!

Kind of different, I know!  Feels a little strange, doesn’t it?  Gone are the nostalgia of the manger scenes that rest on our fireplace mantles; the children’s Christmas pageant with our kids dressing up as house servants instead of shepherds, aristocracy instead of barnyard animals. 

But wouldn’t it make more sense, really?  I mean, lest we forget, Jesus is a king – King of Kings and Lord of Lords, as we call him.  Those are more than fancy titles, you know.  Kings didn’t just materialize out of nowhere.  They were born into their royalty; from the very beginning they were clothed in purple.
And yet that’s not what we have – not even close.  Not a palace, but a manger.  Not a comfy bed, but clumps of straw on rocky ground.  Not maidservants and midwives, but barnyard animals and one very anxious father-to-be.  Not a basinet, but a feeding trough filled with hay.  It may be the story we’ve come to know.  But it can’t be what we’d expect.

You know, it’s funny.  Births, by their very nature, are what you might call “unexpected expectancies.”  We know when someone is going to have a child, by virtue of the fact that they are pregnant.  If we’re the Duchess of York, whose pregnancy was announced this past week, then the whole world knows it!  And yet, despite all that, absent a scheduled C-section, the actual arrival of the baby is a mystery.  Due dates are like throwing darts at a target with one eye shut – they give you an idea of when, but only to a point.  The baby comes whenever it comes.

So most of the time, parents-to-be wind up hoofing it to the delivery room – as Lorie and I did just a little over eight years ago, screaming down Hwy. 52; Lorie encouraging me to break all kinds of traffic laws to get to the hospital on time.  Some, though, haven’t been as lucky; and there are numerous stories of babies coming into the world in pretty strange places.  In the back of an ambulance.  In a minivan.  On an airplane flying from the United States to Mexico (it apparently took them a while to figure out exactly what country the baby was born in!)  Or, in the back seat of a car in the Huddle House parking lot in nearby Stokesdale.  That one happened just this past Monday morning, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.  Two Huddle House employees helped the mom out until the ambulance came, thereby enabling them to add “baby delivery” to their resume!  Mother and baby, by the way, are reportedly doing fine. (http://mobi.journalnow.com/winston/db_16549/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=tvpuzgvx, visited on 12.4.2012)

There’s a hymn in our hymnal that we rarely sing, but one we’ll sing later in the service, called Gentle Mary Laid Her Child.  The tune is familiar, but the words are strange – for more reasons than one.  They are strange because we don’t know this hymn, but they are also strange because they dare to entertain the odd circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus:

Gentle Mary laid her Child / Lowly in a manger;
There He lay, the undefiled / To the world a Stranger.
Such a Babe in such a place / Can he be the savior?
Ask the saved of all the race / Who have found His favor.

I love that third line: Such a babe in such a place – can he be the savior?  It’s a legitimate question, you know – one we shouldn’t discard so quickly just because it’s harsh or unfaithful.  We have to ask it, because there’s a world of people out there who are asking it every day.  People both in and out of the church; people who expect kings to be born in palaces and not animal stables; people who struggle to embrace good news that, as we talked about last week, sometimes can seem “too good.”  We have to face the fact that Jesus’ arrival in the world was not some smooth, sweet little scene.  It was messy, clumsy, rushed, even scandalous.

There’s this great scene in the movie The Nativity Story, which chronicles the events leading up to the birth of Jesus.  It’s right as Mary and Joseph are leaving Nazareth on their way to Bethlehem – Mary on the donkey’s back and Joseph leading the way.  We see some of Mary and Joseph’s friends in the crowd, staring at them with disgust and scorn.  Perhaps it’d be better to call them “former friends.”  After all, Mary’s claims to have been impregnated by the spirit of God did not exactly win her many fans.   And Joseph – what kind of a man was he, to stand by this woman and her nonsense?  It’s unclear exactly who their “friends” thought less of.

And so as they head off, Mary and Joseph notice how everyone’s looking at them.  And at one point Joseph turns to Mary and says sarcastically, You know, I think they’re going to miss us!

So let’s forget for the moment our romantic attachment to that lovely pastoral scene every Christmas, okay?  Let’s acknowledge that this happened not in the pages of a sweet story we’ve come to cherish, but in the lives of real people – people like you and me.  Can you imagine the scandal of it all!  God’s son – born in an animal stable, a cave; born to a common girl who wasn’t even married.  How could Jesus, the son of the living God, be brought into the world like this?  Does there really have to be a manger?

Because sometimes I wonder – I wonder if things would’ve been all that different had Jesus been born in that city official’s home.  Part of me thinks not – either way, Jesus would’ve still been the child of commoners, returning with his parents to Nazareth, back to his ordinary existence as a poor Judean living in a Roman world.

But then I start thinking to myself that no, it would’ve totally changed things.  Maybe Jesus would’ve become a favorite of this city official, granted all the rights and privileges afforded him.  Maybe he would’ve been spared the life of a struggling Jew, experiencing instead the prestigious life of those in power.  And when it came time for Jesus to become who God wanted him to be, maybe he wouldn’t have been so eager.  Because he wouldn’t have been the outsider seeking renewal.  He would’ve been on the inside, where the inclination is to maintain what you know rather than risk losing what you have.  Jesus’ ministry would’ve been not about transformation but preservation.  So there would’ve been no Sermon on the Mount, no healings, no parables, no hanging out with sinners, no running the moneychangers out of the temple, no last supper, no cross, no new life.

And that, my friends, is why it had to be the manger.  It had to be!  And not because it makes for some great story, or because it gives us something to display on our fireplace mantles.  Not because it gives our kids something to do at church on Christmas Eve afternoon, or because it makes for some of the great hymns to sing: Away in a manger, no crib for a bed / the little lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.

No, it had to be the manger because that was the only way God’s son could do in our world what God needed Jesus to do.  It had to be the manger, because there is no way anyone in a position of power and prestige can fully identify with the less-powerful and prestigious unless they become one themselves.  It had to be the manger, because the manger is a microcosm of life – raw and real, all the way down to the dirt and the draft and the vulnerability of what amounted to a hole in the ground.  From the very first breath his tiny lungs took in, Jesus was right in the thick of it – among the animals and the hay, among the stench, surrounded not by maidservants and a knowledgeable midwife, but by a shell-shocked husband and an assortment of wayward shepherds.  People just like you and me.

And because of that, this is the Good News of the gospel – that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world.  The whole world!  Not just a privileged few; not some and not others.  Jesus is savior for all of us.  Because he was quite literally born into our shoes; into a life fraught with contradictions of joy and sadness, plenty and want, wealth and poverty, satisfied and seeking.  How amazing it is, that the God of the Universe doesn’t look down on us from “on high,” but looks up at us, like a tiny baby gazes up from his manger at all who come to see him.  Mothers and Fathers, shepherds and wise men, sheep and goats and cattle.  ALL of us.

I love the way the last stanza of that hymn I mentioned earlier sums it up:

Gentle Mary laid her Child / Lowly in a manger;
He is still the undefiled / But no more a Stranger.
Son of God of humble birth / Beautiful the story;
Praise His Name in all the earth / Hail! the King of Glory!

We may never understand the paradox of the way God’s son came to us in the world.  Thanks be to God, then, that God’s mighty and miraculous act does not depend on us having to understand it.  Thanks be to God that the manger reveals how much we are loved by God, how precious we are to God.  Thanks be that the manger is where God comes to you and me.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

TO BE MORE LIKE MARY

Luke 1: 5-20, 26-38
Steve Lindsley
December 2, 2012

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There was a knock at the door – not a “tap-tap” but a deep “boom-boom!”  The kind you can hear down in the basement or up on the second floor.  I was actually right in the living room watching a Wake Forest basketball game.  Which meant more than likely I was watching a team that was losing, cause that’s what they did back then, and still do today.  Some things never seem to change. 

I was a senior at Wake and was renting this professor’s house with a few fraternity brothers of life.  It was a pretty sweet arrangement, actually.  It gave us a taste of domestic life; something foreign to your average college student.  Neighbors and block parties, and the occasional random door-knocker.

So I answered the door and there he was – a man in his 50’s, well-dressed, carrying a small tattered leather Bible in his hand.  I had barely taken in the scene when a wide smile spread across his face and he said: I have some good news to tell you!  May I come in?  We sat out on the porch.  And for the next half hour, this man and I had a deep theological conversation.  Because he was, as he told me, a messenger from God – some even called him an angel.  Well, he did.  And he was there to tell me the news that the messiah was coming soon; that the wait was almost over.  He wanted to know if I had Jesus in my heart; and when I told him that I did, he seemed so very happy.  We prayed together and then he was on his way.  On to the next neighbor to share the good news.  And I went back inside to my basketball game.  Wake was still losing.

A messenger from God.  An angel, knocking on my door.  Who would’ve thought?  Funny, isn’t it, how we tend to relegate guys like this to the “not-quite-playing-with-a-full-deck” category; while at the same time having no problems dressing our precious children up in white robes and halos and angel wings in the children’s Christmas pageant, where they recite those famous words: Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy!  All messengers from God, apparently, are not created equal. 

Although Gabriel might feel differently.  He might be inclined to suggest, based on his experience, that the problem is not with the messenger, but the one receiving the message.  Our passage in Luke today tells of two very different responses from two very different people. Gabriel “knocks on the door,” if you will, of the first “house” – the temple in Jerusalem.  And Zechariah answers – Zechariah, the head priest of the temple, faithful in service.  Husband to Elizabeth; the two of them childless for years upon years.  A dream unfulfilled. 

And Gabriel says to him, I have some good news to tell you!  May I come in?  A child will be born.  Yours and Elizabeth’s child.  And the priest greets this news with perfectly understandable skepticism.  We are too old to be parents!  he says.  There’s no way this can happen.   See, sometimes good news is so good that it’s too good.  Too much.  And for this, Zechariah is struck silent, unable to talk.  Not punishment as much as divinely-imposed silent meditation.  Time to think about this news; until that news, that promise is fulfilled.

The messenger goes and knocks on the door of the next house; this one a small shack in the podunk town of Nazareth. And Mary answers – Mary, the teenager in the house, still growing up and learning her way in the world, engaged to a nice young man named Joseph. 

And Gabriel says to her, I have some good news to tell you!  May I come in?  A child will be born.  Your child.  Which is ridiculous, of course.  She’s too young!  Not even married yet!  Good Lord, what will the neighbors say??  But Mary doesn’t question; she doesn’t make excuses.  Instead, she sings a song!  A song with this as its closing refrain:

Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
Let it be with me according to your word.

This story in the first chapter of Luke, so familiar to us, isn’t it?  We read it every Advent; we see it in all those Christmas pageants.  We can almost hear Linus reciting it in that Charlie Brown Christmas special; standing on the stage with the single spotlight.  Like all stories that take root in our collective psyche, Gabriel’s message to Zechariah and to Mary is a narrative we know in our heart.

But sometimes – most of the time, actually – sometimes stories like this are about a whole lot more than a simple narrative, you know?  They’re about a message.  And not a message about Christmas or Jesus or unexpected births.  But a message about good news – the good news of the new thing that God is doing in our lives, in this world; and how we hear and receive that good news. 

Or, how we do not.   It’s true, you know.  It’s not always easy to hear the good news, is it?  You and I, we’ve grown accustomed to hearing and even expecting the bad.  It’s what we’re drawn to.  It’s what sells.  I mean, turn on the news, open up the paper, log on to the website.  What do you find there?  Fiscal cliffs with ever-increasing stakes.  Escalating violence in the Middle East.  Damage from Superstorm Sandy.  And on and on and on.  And the worst part?  We get used to it.  We kind of expect it.  We’ve sort of resigned ourselves to the fact that most of the news we hear from day to day reflects the broken world we live in – a world where lines are drawn, where fear trumps love, where the natural world does what it will.  

So we try our best to live good lives.  We try to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ.  But we can do so only to a point.  Because at some point, we begin to doubt that the good news could ever really be that good.  That’s just not possible, is it?  And so we live cautiously.  Hesitantly.  We place limits on God’s goodness in our lives.  And when that sort of happens, we begin looking a whole lot like Zechariah.

And then Gabriel comes and knocks on our door! 

He comes whether or now we expect him to.  He comes whether or not we recognize him – and most of the time, we don’t.  He comes with news so amazingly good, so incredibly hard to fathom, because it verges on being scandalous in its impossibility.  And I’m not talking about news like: You’re going to be successful in your business or You’re going to get an “A” on your biology mid-term.

No, I’m talking about this kind of news: You – you who are old enough to be a great-grandmother, you who are so young that you’re not even married yet  – you are going to have a child.  You – you who are struggling to make sense of a world where some have so much and others have so little, you will witness a great abundance where there is enough for everyone.  You – you who cry yourself to sleep at night and put on a happy face during the day, the deep and dark sadness lurking just beneath the surface, you will encounter and be embrace by infinite joy.  You – you who live in fear because that is the world you’ve been brought up in, that is the world you have to face day after day after day, you will finally experience living in a world where love is greater than fear. 

That, my friends, is the kind of good news that the angel knocks on our door for, on this first Sunday of Advent.  The question for us is what do we do with it?

That was the question a young boy named Wally once faced.  Wally was a grade-school kid who’d been chosen to play the part of the innkeeper in the church’s Christmas pageant – not the innkeeper who took Mary and Joseph in, but the one before who turned them away.  Wally was this large kid with a reputation of being a bit of a bully, so the pageant director, Miss Lumbard, figured he’d be all the more convincing in the part.

And so the day of the pageant comes.  A large crowd gathers in the sanctuary, and the children are backstage, all dressed in their costumes.  And no one is more caught up in the wonder of it all than Wally.  He waits expectantly in the wings until the time comes for him to walk out on stage as Joseph knocks on the wooden door of the inn. (knock, knock, knock)

“What do you want?” says Wally in a gruff voice as he opens the door.

“We seek lodging, sir,” replies the second-grade Joseph.

“Seek it elsewhere, there’s no room here,” answers Wally.

“Please sir,” says Joseph.  “This is my wife Mary.  Soon she will give birth to our child, and she needs a place to rest.”

And then, for the first time, Wally looks down at Mary.  She’s just a childhood friend of his, of course.  But as he gazes upon this tiny girl in that moment, decked out in robe and sandals and a small pillow tucked in her stomach, it is as if he sees someone else and something more.  And like Zechariah, he is struck silent.

There is this uncomfortable long pause in the sanctuary.  In the wings, Miss Lumbard prompts Wally with his next line, whispering intensely, “No.  Be gone!”  Wally snaps from his trance: “No. Be gone,” he says, unconvincingly.  And as scripted, Joseph turns sadly and takes Mary’s arm, as the two of them start to walk away.

And it is at that moment in the Christmas pageant that Wally does something astounding and writes his own ending to the Christmas story.  Because he isn’t going to let the next innkeeper be the one to take them in, no.  Not when the good news has just been shared with you; not when the promise of God’s amazing and everlasting love is on the verge of being birthed in your very presence.

That’s when Wally, with tears streaming down his face and with his silence broken, cries out in a loud voice, “Wait!  Don’t go!  Don’t go!  Please, bring her back.  She can have my room!”  And the Christmas pageant would never be the same again!

And you know what?  Neither are we, my friends.  Neither are we.  Not to come down hard on ol’ Zechariah.  But perhaps you and I should try this Advent season to be more like Mary?  Embracing the wonder and awe of the Good News that Gabriel brings, even if it doesn’t seem possible, even if it’s too good to be true.  Because our God has this crazy knack for doing his finest work in just those circumstances. Come Immanuel, come.  Knock on our door!  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY - GLEANING THE CORNERS

Leviticus 19:10; Luke 22: 14-29
Steve Lindsley
October 7, 2012

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So, imagine this: it’s a beautiful fall Saturday morning, and guess what you’re doing?  Sleeping in?  Not a chance.  Standing on the sidelines at your kid’s soccer game?  No, they didn’t sign up this year.  You know what you’re doing?  You’re getting out of bed and putting on some old raggedy clothes and a worn-out pair of sneakers.  Trust me, this is what you’re doing!  You’re donning your sun hat and slapping on a little sunscreen.  One might think you’re heading out to do some yard work – raking leaves or mowing the lawn or spreading pine needles – but all of that will have to wait for another day.

Instead, you hop in your car and drive a few miles outside of town, to a farm that covers a few acres.  You vaguely remember passing by it once or twice before, but you still had to print off the email with the address.  Once there, you join up with the rest of the group – some folks you know, others you don’t; all different ages.  They’re dressed like you with the raggedy clothes and sneakers and boots.  And work gloves.

For the next few hours, you and the rest of the group wander the endless rows of this farm – a corn farm, as it is – collecting as many cobs as you can.  This is a bit of a challenge, since the field has already been harvested and most of the corn is gone.  But even modern-day machinery can’t get it all, so there are entire stalks left here and there; some corners that weren’t even harvested.  To your right is a young woman with two kids, and every cob they happen upon is like Christmas.  To your left is an elderly gentleman, who you learn in conversation is the owner of this farm.  He’s given permission for folks to come and do this – the way he sees it, this stuff would all go to waste, so why not give it away?

Around lunchtime a couple of large trucks arrive from the food pantry.  The buckets of corn cobs are surprisingly heavy, but with everyone pitching in you lift them into the back of the trucks.  As they pull out and head to the food pantry, and as you wipe the sweat off your brow and get in your car, you feel good knowing that later that night and over the next few days, that corn will be cooked and eaten by folks who would’ve had nothing for dinner otherwise.  It’s just a few hours of your time, but you feel – no, you know – that it was the best use of a Saturday morning in a long time.

It’s a great story, isn’t it?  Here’s the best part – it’s not just a story.  This sort of thing happens on a regular basis, thanks to the Society of St. Andrew.  Have you heard about this group?  There’s some information in our bulletin if you want to check it out.  The name comes from the disciple who brought the young boy with five loaves and two fish to Jesus.  Among other things, the Society of St. Andrew helps organize local gleanings – the word literally means, “to gather produce left after the harvest.”  It begins with farmers, who agree to let volunteers come on their land after the crop has been harvested – corn, potatoes, apples, oranges, you name it.  These volunteers are regular folks like you and me who have signed up to receive email alerts from the Society of St. Andrew when a local field is ready to be gleaned.  It all takes place in just a few hours on a Saturday morning, and folks are typically done by lunch.  The food is taken to a local food pantry and distributed to those in need and consumed within days.  It is food that, otherwise, would’ve been left in the fields to rot.  Instead, it winds up in the stomachs of those who need it the most.

Now isn’t that the coolest thing!  I mean, talk about some “outside-of-the-box” thinking!  It’s the kind of ingenuity that makes me wonder, “Why in the world did I not think of that?” So who’s the genius behind this initiative?  Who came up with this?

Well, maybe it will surprise us to learn that this gleaning is not some new idea at all – in fact, it is thousands of years old.  It comes from our Bible – from Leviticus, in fact that book we always get stuck in when we try to read the Bible from cover to cover.  It comes from there!  The commandment for God’s people to let the poor glean the corners of their fields – what was left after the harvest – so that they wouldn’t go hungry.  So they would have what they needed to make it through another day.

Now really, this commandment shouldn’t surprise us, especially after this “living Biblically” journey we’ve been on for the past couple of months.  We’ve seen our friend A.J. Jacobs highlight and try to live out these “helping” commandments – commandments to tend to the orphans and widows, the vulnerable; commandments that for whatever reason the church has kind of lost touch with over the years. 

The commandment to allow the poor to glean is the fields is one that A.J. tries unsuccessfully to address in his own context. Listen to his story:

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Day 135. Our living room table is covered with four large terra-cotta pots containing cucumber plants. Or at least scraggly, struggling versions of cucumber plants.

I’ve been trying to engage in some agriculture, seeing as so many biblical laws involve farming. The cucumbers do grow—they each get to be the size of a Good & Plenty candy. And then they promptly die. I don’t understand why. To date I’ve grown and killed about a hundred dozen tiny, prickly, inedible cucumbers.

My hope had been to leave cucumber “gleanings.” The idea of gleanings is one of my favorites in the Bible. Part of the idea is that, ultimately, the land belongs to God, so you respect that and be sure to provide for God’s children.

In any case, how do I apply this amazing notion of gleaning to my life, since the cucumber experiment is flopping? I decide to try to figure out how to update it. What’s the closest thing to harvesting in my life?  Well, if I accidentally drop anything valuable on the street, I’ll leave it there. It would be God’s will. I would not gather it up.  And for several days, I don’t drop a thing, not even so much as a nickel or a clump of lint. But then, yesterday, I am pulling out my wallet on the corner of 81st and Columbus, and a crumpled five-dollar bill falls out. I glance at it for a second and keep walking.

“Excuse me, sir!” I turn around. A woman is holding up my bill. “You dropped this!” “Uh, that’s OK,” I say.

“It’s yours. I saw it fall out of your pocket,” she says. I pause. “No, it wasn’t mine,” I say, and keep walking. This lying has to stop.

(from The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, 163-165.)

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Kind of a double-fail there for A.J. isn’t it?  Kills baby cucumbers and can’t even fake lose a $5 bill!  But see, I think that’s part of the rub.  We’re not the agrarian society our Biblical predecessors were.  The vast majority of us don’t own farms that others could glean in.  So what do we do with all these biblical laws that deal with farming and crops and harvesting?  How do you and I “glean” today? 

I don’t know.  Although I wonder if A.J. might have been on to something anyway.  Did you pick up on what he said there in the middle, just a quick little comment?  A.J. said the one thing these agrarian-centered laws remind us is that everything we have belongs to God.  It’s not just that it comes from God – it belongs to God.

And when you think about that, when you dig deep into that, that’s a pretty radical notion, isn’t it?  Not just in what it means, but in what it implies.  It’s like Bryan McFarland said last week – there really is “enough for everyone” on this planet.  In a world where we are conditioned to define everything in terms of scarcity, the fact of the matter is that God provides more than we need!  In a world where we live to protect the little we think we have; God opens our eyes and invites us to see the abundance!  And as a man I’ve quoted many pulpit from this pulpit once said, “The question is not whether we can end poverty.  The question is, do we have the will tohttp://www.doonething.org/quotes/endpoverty-quotes.htm, visited on 10.2.2012)

That man, by the way, is Bono, the lead singer from U2.  I know, I know, another Bono quote.  But seriously – if a rock star gets it, shouldn’t we in the church get it too?  That’s why I give thanks to God for groups like Society of St. Andrew and the work they are doing to re-introduce the biblical practice of gleaning into our 21^st century world. And I want to encourage each of you to take this flyer home and prayerfully consider how you might become part of their mission in your quest to “live biblically.”

One final thought about all of this – you know, the really great thing about gleaning is that it works both ways.  Sometimes we do the work of gleaning.  But other times we’re on the receiving end of it.  And one place where that receiving happens is right here – at this table before us.  A table set by our dear brother and sister in Christ, Bill and Jane Rountree; but a table that is also set by God.  This is God’s meal for us.  This is God’s gleaning – the bread and the cup, the harvest of Jesus’ very life. 

And as wonderful as this harvest is, the fact is that sometimes we just don’t know how to receive it.  I love the way Luke tells the story of the Last Supper in our scripture today, how immediately following this meal, this incredible gleaning of self-sacrificial love, the disciples start arguing over who was the greatest among them!  And what does Jesus do?  He tells them that the greatest is the one who serves, the one who puts others first, the one who at the table makes sure that everyone else is fed before they take the first bite.

My friends, your very life is a gleaning!  A gift from God to the world.  To understand your life as that gift; as a field that needs to be gleaned, and to give of yourself generously to others – that is the heart of not only this commandment from Leviticus, but this wonderful meal that we are about to share together.  And so in the spirit of gleaning, and in the spirit of Christ himself, may you and I forever be known to the world not just by our harvest, but by how we share the rest of ourselves with those who need us the most.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: A "POWER UNDER"

Deuteronomy 24: 17-22; Luke 6:17-31
Steve Lindsley
September 9, 2012

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You know what you notice when you start reading the Bible – not just the parts you’re already familiar with, but the parts you get hopelessly stuck in in one of those “read-the-Bible-in-a-year” things?  You know what you start seeing that you didn’t see before?  Widows and orphans.  It’s true!  Everywhere you turn, especially in the Old Testament, like the passage Catherine read, we find them: widows and orphans, mentioned dozens and dozens of times, like a tag line.  And specifically, how people are to treat widows and orphans.  Don’t abuse widows and orphans.  Leave the harvest of the corners of your fields for widows and orphans.  Don’t deprive justice for widows and orphans. Kings and governments are raked over the coals by the prophets for turning their backs on widows and orphans.  When judgment befalls the Israelite nation, it’s not only because they were unfaithful, but because they didn’t take proper care of…..who?  Widows and orphans!

What is up with all these widows and orphans??  Were they some kind of special interest group?  Did they know someone high-up in the system?   See, here’s the thing with widows and orphans: in Biblical times, they were the most vulnerable members of society.  Both were left to fend for themselves without the kinds of social safety nets we have today.  Orphans had no parents to raise them.  And widows, in a true sign of the male-dominated society back then, widows had no husbands to provide for them.  So everyone was commanded to care for widows and orphans.  No “I’ve got mine, you get yours” mentality here.  Every component of society – religious, political, community – they was commanded to care for them.

And even though Jesus didn’t use the term “widows and orphans,” you can bet he’s talking about them, and the rest of society’s vulnerable, in our second scripture today.  It sort of looks and feels a little like Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, doesn’t it?  Some of the same language.  But there are noticeable differences between the two.  For one, it’s not the “poor in spirit” who are blessed.  It’s just the “poor.”  Not the spiritually deprived, but those who are deprived of life’s basic necessities.  The hungry, the thirsty, the needy, the beggars and homeless.  Widows and orphans.  They’re the ones who are blessed.

Oh, and one other difference: there are woes here.  Not “W-H-O-A,” but “W-O-E.”  Merriam-Websters defines this “woe” as “great sorrow or distress.”  And who are these woes for?  Well, they’re for the rich, the full and satisfied, the laughing and content – to them, Jesus says, “woe!”

Huh.  That doesn’t sound good, does it?  No.  You know what else isn’t good?  Just between you and me – I think I may be one of the ones he’s talking about!  Yeah, I know!  I mean, I wouldn’t call myself “rich” by any means.  But I was able to pay my bills last month, and the family and I are getting all excited about our Disney World trip.  So I guess in that sense I’m rich.  Am I full and satisfied?  Well, I get three meals a day, every day – and actually, I’m trying to keep a few pounds off.  Laughing and content?  I gotta admit, I’m a pretty happy guy.  I like my life.  I have very little to complain about.   Woe to me?  That’s not good, is it?

See, here’s the problem when we read stuff in the Bible that we don’t usually read: stuff that doesn’t fall within the parameters of our pre-conceived notions.  We find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being challenged in our very ways of thinking and believing and living.  It’s like a little explosion going off inside us, shaking the foundations of our faith…  BOOM!

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with my youth pastor growing up.  Gosh, I was only twelve or thirteen, and he was a Duke Divinity student who was doing a year internship with our church.  His name was Lee.  Lee Stroud.  Lee and I were having this casual conversation at a rest stop on the way to a church retreat.  And we were talking about our calling as Christians to take care of the vulnerable – widows and orphans and all the others – and I think I said something like, you know, that’s just what good Christians do.

And Lee said no, no that’s not the reason at all.  And I was like, what do you mean that’s not the reason?  And he said, “Steve, it’s not just because we’re called to take care of them.  It’s because we’re called to become one with them.”

BOOM!  I mean, wow, right?  The idea that we aren’t truly helping the hopeless until we first become hopeless.  That we aren’t fully feeding the hungry until we hunger ourselves.  That we’re not really helping the widows and orphans and vulnerable among us until we become vulnerable with them and see the world the way they see it.  I’ve never fully recovered from what Lee said to me outside an interstate rest stop one day.  And you know what?  I hope I never do.

What the church needs today is not people pushing agendas or getting all wrapped up in hot-topic issues.  What the church needs are people who can ignite that little faith explosion inside us.  And that’s why I’m grateful for folks who draw us into these kinds of conversations, even when they don’t always line up nice and neat with our Westernized Christianity.  I think our friend A.J. Jacobs does a bit of this in the part of his book where he talks about a group called the Red Letter Christians:

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I’d never heard of the Red-letter Christians before my biblical year. They don’t have TV shows with millions of viewers and 1-800 operators standing by. The Red-Letter Christians are a loose-knit, like-minded group of preachers, the most prominent of whom are a Philadelphia-based pastor named Tony Campolo, and Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine and author of God’s Politics. U2’s Bono is an honorary member.

In their own way, the Red-Letter Christians are Biblical literalists. They probably would avoid that label, since the word has such negative connotations. And, true, they accept more figurative language in the Bible than, say, the Pat Robertson camp. But they are literal in the sense that their goal is to return to the plain, primary, simple sense of Jesus’s words.  So - when Jesus said that you should invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind to your banquets, then you should. When Jesus talked about nonviolence, we should take him at his word. The Red-Letter Christians are antiwar, anticonsumerism, and above all, anti-poverty.  They point out that there are more passages in the Bible about the poor than any other topic save idolatry – several thousand more, in fact. (from The Year Of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, 269-271).

In a conversation A.J. has with Campolo, the evangelist laments the fact that so much of Christianity today has been co-opted by political forces, making it more about a party platform than “the radical teachings of Jesus.”  He also bashes the “prosperity gospel,” saying, “Christianity is not a watered-down version of middle-class morality.”

And then catch what he says here:

The problem with a lot of religion is that people have “interpreted the Gospel so much, they’ve started believing the interpretations instead of what Jesus actually said.

BOOM!

Here’s the hard truth, my friends: the gospel by its very design draws distinct lines between two very different kinds of power in this world.  One is “power over” – the way much of our society runs, a hierarchy, top-to-bottom, chain of command kind of stuff.  Great for the business world; lousy for the church.  The other kind of power is “power under” – winning people’s hearts by sacrificing for those in need.  God’s power, demonstrated most completely in Jesus Christ.  The power the church, as the body of Christ, needs to emulate.

The challenge for the church, though, has always been how to go about doing this.  Like the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Roman churches, we are “in this world but not of this world.”  And that’s the rub.  When people of faith employ the practices and language of “power over” to engage the world around them, they lose part of their collective soul.  And the reason is because we in the church do not serve Jesus by being more powerful; we serve Jesus by being more faithful.  Let me say that again: we do not serve Jesus by being more powerful; we serve him by being more faithful.

And that is the fundamental difference between “power over” and “power under:”

• “Power over” tells us that “the one who dies with the most toys wins.”  “Power under” tells us that our worth is not determined by what we own but by who we belong to.
• “Power over” tells us that strength and might and domination are what bind us together.  “Power under” dares to tell us that we are bound together by sacrificial love.
• “Power over” suggests that “if you are not with us, you’re against us.”  “Power under” has the courage to call into question who the “us” really is.
• “Power over” tells us that a person’s identity comes from their place in this world.  “Power under” tells us that a person’s identity comes from simply being a child of God.

And I know, it’s hard to conceptualize what this “power under” looks like.  We see so little of it around us.  But I think I may have seen it not too long ago, and maybe you did too. 

It's a picture of hundreds of Texas A&M college students, dressed in maroon t-shirts, standing in a single line encircling a cemetery plot on a hot spring Texas day.  Did you hear about this?  They were standing there because there was a funeral going on for a fallen soldier, a fellow Aggie grad; and word had gotten out that Westboro Baptist Church would be picketing the funeral.

Now you know about Westboro, I presume?  That tiny “church” in Kentucky, comprised almost entirely of family members, with a very toxic and warped ideology they have no problems sharing.  They’ve taken to protesting at military funerals and funerals of famous people, ridiculously declaring these honorable people are somehow a sign of a country falling away from God.  It is nothing but a marketing ploy to garner publicity, and you got to hand it to them, it has worked to a “T.”  Typically their spiteful protests elicit an angry response – which is exactly what they want, since the church claims among its small membership a cadre of attorneys.  These attorneys, incidentally, happen to be well-versed in the ins and outs of protesting etiquette; ready to take to court and sue for tens of thousands of dollars anyone who crosses the line.  Which these attorneys do, with great frequency and great success.  Westboro’s shtick is not only a marketing ploy; it’s a huge moneymaker.

But not on the day this picture was taken.  Because this crowd of Aggie students was not there to return evil for evil.  They weren’t going to engage in “power over” behavior.  No, instead they stood silently in a line shielding the grieving family from the Westboro folks and the outlandish taunts and rhetoric they spewed forth. They absorbed all that hate on their behalf – on behalf of the vulnerable at the graveside; that particular day’s “widows and orphans.”   They absorbed it with a “power under.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/texas-am-students_n_1653002.html, visited on 9.4.2012)

BOOM! 

Incidentally, you know where I got this story from?  I got it off a popular news website, under a section they have called “Good News.”  I love that! Cause that’s exactly what “power under” is, you know?  It may not always be “comfortable news” or “feel-good news” or “news-that-affirms-how-we’re-already-living news.”  But make no mistake: it is Good News: good news for the widows and orphans and the vulnerable; and because of that, good news for the rest of us who are called to become one with them.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: DO WHAT TO MY LAND??

Leviticus 25: 1-17; Luke 4: 14-21
Steve Lindsley
August 26, 2012

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Six years you shall sow your field and prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield,
But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest of the land,
And you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.
For a year.

Tell me something: what do you imagine this looked like?  To let the land go for an entire year without so much as a hint of a back hoe or a lawnmower or a weed eater.  What’d that look like?  I mean, the Bible is chopped full of all kinds of amazing stories and evocative images: the parting of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho, the baptisms at the Jordan River.  It’s one thing to read about them in black and white, but it’s another to try to engage them with all five senses.  What did Leviticus 25:3-4 look, feel, taste, touch, smell like?

Maybe it was like my lawn earlier this week; the lawn I hadn’t mowed in quite a while; the lawn that’s experienced freakish growth in our relatively wet summer, absent the typical brown patches that usually fester in late August.  Uneven, unruly, a mess.  It would not win any awards from the homeowner’s association, I can assure you!

Or maybe Leviticus 25:3-4 is like the “garden” in our backyard.  And I use that term very loosely.  It’s more than a mess – it’s an absolute disaster.  Where green peppers and tomatoes and beans and lettuce should be, are instead a vast cornucopia of weeds and grass than I couldn’t have grown if I tried.  We haven’t touched this thing since June; and I’d like to say it’s because the Lindsleys are faithfully observing Leviticus, but the truth is that we gave up on it a long time ago.  Not out of scriptural celebration but cynical frustration. 

Such an odd commandment, this “land-sabbath” thing.  But we’ve got to pay attention to it, don’t we?  Just like A.J. Jacobs did.  Because it’s in here – it’s in the Bible, and the Bible is the book we say we believe in as Christians and as people of faith.  So let’s see what A.J. has to say about it – and as we’ll see, it’s about a whole lot more than the land itself:

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Here’s how it works: The Bible says that years—like days of the week—belong in a cycle of seven. The seventh year is called the Sabbath year, and big things happen.

First, that entire year, you must stop working. No farming is allowed. This is so the land can rest, and the needy can come and eat all they want from the vines and olive trees. Second, you must forgive your neighbor’s debts. All IOUs are erased.

After seven consecutive Sabbath cycles – forty-nine years – something even more radical happens: the Jubilee year. During the Jubilee year, you must return all property to its original owner (Leviticus 25:10).

(Year of Living Biblically, pg. 63)

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Now imagine that!  We’re not just talking about unmowed lawns or garden disasters, are we? The needy grazing in our yards? Forgiving all debts?  Returning property?  What kind of madness is this??
I mean, last week we acknowledged that in our quest to “live biblically,” we do a fair amount of cherry-picking commandments.  And oftentimes the ones we choose are ones that already fit: the “Do not kill” and “Do not steal” type of things line up pretty well with the way our society is supposed to function.

But sometimes we ignore commandments like this because, frankly, the consequences of following them are ridiculous.  As A.J. recognizes, erasing all debts and returning property would throw the world’s financial markets into chaos.  And letting the poor graze on our land and eat from the crops we once planted, taking advantage of our work and our labor while doing none of their own – well, there’s a term for that in our highly-charged political rhetoric, and it’s not a flattering one.

So it’s hard to personalize a commandment like this, don’t you think?  A.J. thought so:

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Even on a personal level, I’ve found (jubilee) a challenge to practice. Consider the not-working part.  I've worked for sixteen years straight, so I'm long overdue for a yearlong hiatus.  The problem is, I've got a deadline for this book and a kid who is obsessed with offensively pricey Thomas the Tank Engine toys.

As for forgiving debts, I try two things:

1) Since bonds are debts, I try to forgive a bond I have owned for nine years. It was issued by the New York State Dormitory Authority.  “We’ve never had a request like this before,” says the fourth guy I was sent to. He finally suggests that I donate some money to my favorite State University of New York school.

2) To my recollection, the only other outstanding debt that stretches more than seven years is the one owed by my sophomore-year college roommate. He owed me at least twenty dollars. The weasel would buy yogurt with the communal house money, then hide it from the rest of us in paper bags labeled “Photo Equipment— Do Not Touch.” I’ve always held a grudge. I let it go.

(Year of Living Biblically, pg. 64)

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I’m sure if A.J.'s college roommate ever read his book, he’d do a little “jubilee dance” in the streets!  Twenty bucks, whoo-hoo!  But really, A.J. hits the nail on the head: it’s hard to internalize commandments like this when they operate on such a grandiose scale. 

Which is why you and I have to dig a little deeper into the fabric of this commandment; beyond what it tells us to do to who it is calling us to be.  And see, when we dig deeper into Jubilee, when we journey to its heart and see that single strand that runs through it all, we come upon this timeless truth: all that we have, all that we have worked to acquire in our lives, really does not belong to us.  It’s not ours.  It all belongs to God.  All of it.  All of it.  And that is a tremendously powerful and extremely unsettling truth. 

I think about this truth every time the offering plates are passed up and down the pews on Sunday morning.  I think about the fact that we put our dollar bills or our check in there, thinking we have done some exceedingly gracious act by giving to God’s kingdom-building something that belongs to us.  When, in fact, the powerful and unsettling truth is that we are only returning to God a portion of what God has already given us.

And it’s not just our “stuff” that belongs to God.  You know, it’s easy to feel good about ourselves when we work hard in the fields – or in the office, or in the classroom – and are sustained in doing so.  But to stop doing that for a whole year and still be sustained – we eventually realize that we belong to God as well.  Despite what some in our culture try so desperately to convince us of, despite what we try to tell ourselves, we are not unto ourselves.  We belong to the God who sustains us even in our rest; even when the fields go untamed for a year.

So if this is the heart of jubilee – a complete redefining of who we are and whose we are – then what other crazy things might this commandment be commanding us to do? 

Back a few decades ago, two British evangelists named Martin Dent and Bill Peters put this commandment into practice as it related to the weighty (and sometimes contentious) issue of third-world debt.  Billing themselves as “Jubilee Network,” they lobbied some of the larger nations of the world – including England, France and the United States – to forgive debts on monies loaned to third-world countries. 

The movement got quite a boost when Bono, lead singer for a little rock band named U2, joined the cause.  And not just as a celebrity face, but as a full-fledged Jubilee activist. In 2006, Bono spoke about his work with Jubilee at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC:

It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with it. Jesus is a young man, he’s met with the rabbis, he’s a clever guy; but he hasn’t done much yet.  When he does, his first words are from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, setting the oppressed free – to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee.”  And he closed the scroll and said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

And listen to what Bono says next:

What Jesus was really talking about in this year of the Lord’s favor, this year of Jubilee, was an era of grace.  And we’re still in it.

Grace.  Now that’s something we can sink our teeth into, isn’t it?  More than fields and crops, vineyards and grapes, lawns and lawnmowers.  Grace.  Begun in the year of Jubilee, completed in Jesus himself.  Resting and letting go and starting over.  Grace.

How hard it is for us to give to someone something they didn’t earn; something they may not deserve.  How hard it is to not only turn our lives over to God in a holy period of rest, but to share our lives with others, even though they have no claim over our lives, even though we don’t have claim over our own lives.

How hard that grace is.  But my friends, this Jubilee grace is not just about us giving it.  It’s not just about us extending jubilee to others.  Because that side of grace is the easy kind of grace.  That’s the kind we’re good at!  That’s the kind we get recognized and acknowledged for. 

No, the harder grace for you and for me is receiving it.

And here’s why: you and I operate in a world where people work and not rest, where people grab hold and not let go, where people continue down the dead-end road instead of turning and starting over.  We live in a world that is so caught up in rugged individualism and personal pride that we make it near impossible for grace to be a two-way street.  We love God and we love others.  The part we struggle with is letting God and others love us.

There’s this wonderful little story about an African tribe and what they do when a member of that community breaks tribal customs and rules.  That person is brought to the center of the village.  All work ceases and every man, woman and child gathers in a large mass around the accused, encircling them completely so they have no way of escape.  They are trapped.

And you know what the tribe does to them?  They bombard the rejected person with affirmations!  One at a time, friends and family expound on all the good that person has done.  Every incident, every experience is recounted with detail and accuracy.  All their positive attributes, their strengths and kindnesses.  Finally, the circle is broken, and a joyous celebration ensues, and the outcast is welcomed back.  And the village is made whole again. 

Now that, folks, is some jubilee grace!  For everyone.  So listen: if you want to let your lawn or garden go rogue for a year, and risk the wrath of the homeowners association, have at it!  But how about doing something really biblical?  Forgive debts.  Share your bounty with others who, like you, don’t own it.  Share grace.  And most importantly, receive it.  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

STOP FREAKING OUT!

Luke 24: 36-48; Psalm 4: 4-8
Steve Lindsley
April 22, 2012

 

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So our scripture today from the gospel of Luke begins rather awkwardly: While they were talking about this….  That’s how it starts.  And so right off the bat there’s more things we don’t know than things we do.  We know that there’s some talking going on.  But we don’t know who’s doing the talking, nor do we know what it is they’re talking about it.

And you know what this reminds me of?  This reminds of people – and I know you know the type I’m talking about – people who, when they start a conversation with you, you immediately have this sensation as if you’ve been plopped down right in the middle of some conversation you know absolutely nothing about.  You know folks who do this?  I have a good friend who does this sort of thing to me all the time.  He’ll call me up on the phone: Hey, Steve! So listen – I spoke with that guy, and he thinks the first idea is much better than the other one, but not unless it can happen on a different night at the previous location.  How’s that sound, Steve?  Doesn’t this drive you nuts?!  Your brain has to go into multitasking mode, as one half keeps listening to what the person is saying, while the other half is sifting through mental file cabinets from previous conversations, all hoping to eventually figure out what this guy is talking about!

While they were talking about this…  Like your high school English teacher always told you, we have to read back a little bit.  We have to get some context.  Because scripture, like so much in life, never happens in a vacuum.  We read back into the 23rd chapter and we see that the “they” that’s referred to here are the disciples – women and men and, more specifically, the two who had walked on the road to Emmaus when they happened upon the risen Christ.  And what was it they were talking about?  Well, they’re talking about Jesus, as most people were.  This incredible news that was slowly starting to get out – that on that Easter Sunday morning long ago, a morning we celebrated in this very sanctuary two Sundays prior, the stone was moved, the tomb was empty, and Jesus was alive again!  So perhaps understandably so, the people who had walked and talked and lived and laughed with Jesus for the last three years were, in fact, talking about Jesus.

And that’s when it happened: While they were talking about this, while the disciples were talking about Jesus, Jesus himself stood among them.  All of the sudden, it reads; as if he appeared out of thin air like something in a Harry Potter movie.  But we know that’s not it.  We know those disciples were so enamored in their conversation, so consumed by the news of Jesus being alive again, that they simply did not notice when Jesus came into the room with them.  Came into the room and into the presence of his closest friends.  And he greets them simply by saying, “Peace be with you.”  I have to wonder, if this took place in 2012, if he would’ve said something more along the lines of, “What’s up!”

Never has a simple friendly greeting been met with such an animated response.  Those disciples were terrified.  Absolutely terrified!  Because, see, it’s one thing to talk about Jesus being alive again; it’s one thing to toss that idea around in your head a little bit.  But it’s another thing entirely to be confronted with that risen Jesus, in the flesh – right there in the room with you.  And so they were terrified.  They were scared to death.  In fact, they actually thought for a second that they were seeing a ghost!  Have you ever had an experience where you thought you saw a ghost?  And not in a haunted house at Halloween or something like that, but some “presence” that you weren’t expecting and couldn’t explain?  You remember that surge of adrenaline, that kick to your heart rate, that quickness of breath that shot through your entire body? 

That’s what those disciples were feeling here: While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said, “What’s up!”  They were terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost.”

And, you know, I love the way Jesus responds to this:

“Why are you frightened?  Why all the doubts?  Look at my hands; look at my feet – it’s really me!  Touch me. Look me over from head to toe. A ghost doesn’t have muscle and bone like this.

Jesus walks into the room and the place goes crazy.  And what does Jesus basically say to them?  He says, Y’all, stop freaking out!  Stop freaking out!  He shows off his legs and limbs to prove he’s not some figment of their imagination.  He even eats a piece of fish to prove it’s him, it’s really him – because as everyone knows, ghosts don’t really have much of an appetite.

Stop freaking out!  But really, Jesus, can you blame them?  Can you blame them for being a little overwhelmed by this strange turn of events?  We talked about it two weeks ago on Easter Sunday; how Mary Magdalene just assumed that the man who greeted her outside the empty tomb that morning was the gardener.  That’s because one of the foundations of life on this planet, for however many years it’s been around, is this: dead people don’t come back to life.  And in a broader sense, when we think about it, our hopes and our dreams – the outlandish things we long for and wish would happen – our hopes and dreams are called such for a reason: because more often than not, they never become anything more than just hopes and dreams. 

Which kind of makes us wonder, I think, if what those disciples were freaking out about was not really Jesus being in the room with them, but the realization of what that meant.  That death had been defeated and that Jesus really was who they hoped he was; who they dreamt him to be.  I mean, think about it – Jesus Christ, the risen son of God.  Man, that’s enough to freak anybody out!  You know, sometimes it’s not the bad stuff in life, but the potential of the most wonderful thing happening that scares us silly.

What are you afraid of?  It’s not just a question Jesus asked those disciples.  It’s also a question that was asked of a locker room full of football players in the 2000 movie The Replacements.  Anybody seen this?  The story goes that, prior to the beginning of a professional football season, the players went on strike over salary disputes.  So teams had to stock their rosters with second-rate rejects who just the week before were working in grocery stores or factories or – in one case – in prison.

The head coach, played by Gene Hackman, was faced with the daunting task of uniting this motley crew of misfits into a cohesive team in just a few weeks.  And it wasn’t just X’s and O’s he had to worry about.   The players were struggling to get along.  They didn’t believe in each other.  They didn’t believe in themselves.  So in one of their last team meetings before the first game, Coach gathers the players in the locker room and asks them: What are you afraid of? 

After a long and uncomfortable pause, a 300 pound former sumo wrestler named Franklin raises his hand.  And Franklin says, “Spiders! I’m scared to death of spiders.”  Another guy nods in agreement, and a third chimes in: “Yeah, man, spiders creep me out too!”  Coach shakes his head in annoyance:  “No, no, I’m talking about on the football field.  What are you afraid of on the football field?”  Franklin, with a quizzical look, says, “Spiders on the football field?”

Now they’re all talking. Someone else says they’re afraid of roaches, another can’t stand poison ivy.  The kicker who has played soccer all his life despises roller coasters.  The receiver with the long mullet says haircuts terrify him.

They’re obviously not getting what the coach is going for, until Falco speaks up.  Falco, the all-star college quarterback who got injured at the end of his senior year and never fulfilled all the expectations.  Falco raises his hand.  And he said, “Coach, I’m afraid of quicksand.  I’m afraid of quicksand, but not the way you think.  See, you’re playing football.  You’ve won awards, they say you’re gonna go high in the draft, make a lot of money.  They tell you you’re set.  And then you get injured.  And you try to work your way back, but then one thing goes wrong... and then another... and another.  And the harder you fight and the more you hope, the deeper you sink.  Until you can't move, you can't breathe, because you're in over your head.  Like quicksand.”

And now the room is quiet; and all the other guys nod their head in agreement, because this is one fear they share together.  The fear of hopes and dreams unrealized and unachieved.  The fear that nothing will ever change.

You know what the crazy thing is?  In a sense those disciples in that room, right before Jesus walked in, in a sense their lives would’ve been so much easier had Jesus just stayed in the tomb.  Easier in the sense that that’s exactly what they and everyone else would’ve expected.  Yes, they would’ve mourned the loss of a dear friend.  Yes, they would’ve been devastated at the end of his mission and his dream for the world, for God’s kingdom on earth.  But sometimes, sometimes it’s easier to live in a world where you can see what’s coming, where you know what to expect, and where hopes and dreams stay hopes and dreams.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy, was it?  The stone was rolled away; the tomb was empty.  And Jesus came to them in a room and scared them to death, this man who had defied death, this man who said “What’s up!” and told them stop freaking out, even though they had every right in the world to.  Told them they didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

How many times have you heard someone say to you, “Don’t be afraid” when being afraid was exactly the way you felt?  You know, if there is one thing the Bible says to us over and over and over again, it is not to be afraid.  Literally. Did you know that the phrase “Do not fear” appears 58 times in the Old and New Testaments combined?  58 times!  More than anything about who we should or shouldn’t vote for, more than anything that’s allegedly in there about homosexuality or other cultural divides so often promulgated by people of faith.  Fifty-eight times, it says, “Do Not Fear.”  Fifty-eight times, God implores the faithful not to be imprisoned by their anxieties, not to be afraid of the amazing and wonderful things God can do in their life, in this world.  Fifty-eight times, God implores us to dare to dream – I know that sound terribly cliché, but it’s true, because dreaming and hoping are the very embodiment of non-fearful living.  Fifty-eight times, God proposes a radical alternative – to replace fear with hope, hate with love, prejudice with acceptance, indifference with compassion, judgment with forgiveness.  All of which accompanied Jesus out of the tomb on that Easter morning.

So tell me something, First Presbyterian – tell me what YOU are afraid of.  And you know I’m not talking about spiders or poison ivy or roller coasters, right?  No, what are those things that keep you from latching on to the reality of the resurrected Christ who is sitting there with you, right now?  Now that Easter is in the rearview mirror, now as we move into the life that awaits us, what things make you live fearfully and keep those hopes and dreams at bay? 

Because Jesus was spot-on when he told us: We’re the witnesses.  We are!  I mean, we may not have been in the room with the disciples way back when, but you know what?  We are here right now.  And since we’re here, and since the risen Christ is here with us, we are alibis in this amazing, freaking-out-worthy venture we call the Christian life.  And you know what that means?  That means we are automatically part of that same hope and same dream that caused suck a ruckus all those years ago, where our worst fears were transformed. 

So freak out at the risen Jesus, if you must.  But only for a little while.  Because one day, Jesus’ presence and God’s hopes and dreams for us and for the world will not be something unexpected.  It will just be the way things are supposed to be.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.